I have been playing live poker for a few years at the $1/3 level. I have developed the typical TAG style and can easily exploit fish. However, the other night I found myself at a game full of mostly competent other TAGs and my edge felt significantly smaller. To be able to beat the better evolving players as well as move up to 2/5 and higher, should I invest my time into learning GTO or is my time better spent elsewhere? I have Pokers 1% as well as Applications of No Limit Hold'em.

Playing GTO is meant to prevent you from being exploited, not for you to exploit.

Instead you should try to exploit the tendencies of the 2/5 TAG regs. Value bet thinner, polarize more, put them to really difficult decisions, etc.

I know that GTO is to prevent from being exploited. I was saying if 2/5 players will not be as easy to exploit, it would make sense to play a GTO strategy against them to increase your edge. But ok that makes sense thanks.

Actually GTO can help you exploit other players because you'll notice their mistakes more easily. But I'm not sure I'd recommend those books instead of other books, especially at 1/3.

I'm really skeptical about this claim. A 1/3 NL table full of mostly competent TAG players? I don't believe it. I think what's really happening here is you faced a table full of regs who are on the nitty side and ABC is probably a better description of their play than TAG. These guys won't give their money away as easily and their leaks are harder to spot, but a good TAG player should be able to notice their mistakes easily.

I see these types of tables a lot. I used to struggle more with them, and I wasn't as good and didn't focus as well so mistakes were harder to spot. But these days I've gotten better and focus better, and I've noticed that if you play close attention then you'll still see them making plenty of mistakes.

IMO what a lot of people call tight-aggressive is really tight-passive or maybe even slightly loose-passive.

Edit: If you actually did face a table with mostly competent TAG players then it's just 1 table and I wouldn't worry about it.

You should just move to a new game if the players are that good or that tight at anything 2/5 or under. biggest enemy in these games is rake. If you are playing tons of small pots or just playing to break even against half the table, it's time to table change.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...heory-1478991/

The consensus is no.

GTO is today's catchphrase that players use to look like they are sophisticated. A couple of years ago it was "triple range merge" and before that it was "polarized range." FWIW, if you read, understood and implemented Miller's book, no LLSNL game should be "tough." It is more likely you missed a lot of what he was saying.

how do u propose u learn GTO?

Another good reference: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/94...holdem-245479/

ahem...
if someone really mastered gto play, be it, hu, 6max, full ring, nlh, plo, whatever, he´s going to be a far superior poker player in pretty much every aspect of the game, also live low stakes no limit holdem.

problem is, how on earth are you trying to "learn" gto play, op? there is no really "gto" unless you basically pick every possible spot and break it down mathematically.

that being said, jumping a lil into gto play will improve your thought process and overall performance immensely.

don´t really disagree with venice, the terminus is being thrown around left and right without having the slightest clue what it means, but it is the future (and presence) of high level poker. but well, only very few poker players have the intellectual abilities and willingness to really go deep into stuff like this.

i prob lack both of those... still, getting a slight clue about basic ideas will improve you a lot.

You can absolutely practice the iterative process of moving towards nash equilibrium point of GTO where by definiteion both players are playing perfectly.

One good technique is to simply work out the hand as best you can imagine both players having played it. Then iterate. Go back and choose a player and ask if he could do anything different that would improve his EV.

I'd recommend starting these exercises on the River where there are the fewest "branches of the tree" to work out.

Eventually you can get into using CREV too to help you. It has a bit of steep learning curve, but there are many great videos put out by the author.

As you go down the path of learning GTO, I would simultaneously develop your ability to spot exploitable leaks in your opponents play.

Concentrating entirely on one or the other will be less "optimal". Find the balance.

Sigh. No. Unexploitable does not mean able to exploit.

Mind you, if you know what the nash equilibrium is and can tell where your V is deviating from it, you should be able to take it to the next step and figure out the best way to exploit his mistakes. That's not playing GTO, though (which would actually be much easier, but also still beyond the current state of the art), it's recognizing and exploiting the lack of GTO.

Grunch- do you need to know GTO to beat/ crush live poker? Nope.

Is it something that would be beneficial for your game if you played higher/ something that is intellectually stimulating for many poker nerds like me? Yes

Listen to Doug Polk's interview after playing the playing the near-GTO bot in a match.

He claims that it's better and put him into more difficult spots than his typical high-stakes opponents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L10zaLtUabY

If it put him into difficult spots, it'll put your weak (or good) LLSNL Villains into difficult spots as well.

The author (Janda) of Applications of No Limit Hold'em has said to skip the pre-flop ranges he gave in the book and instead use the near-GTO ones.

GTO is especially relevant to the threads/situations where lots of people are posting very different ranges that they hope the Villain might have. With GTO you play your cards, and your ranges, not the random ranges you make-up for your Villains.

It also has a lot to say about the most common mistake that people have which is not understanding relative hand strength, since the GTO approach considers every hand you could have in a particular spot.

There's probably no situation where a GTO approach doesn't at least give you good insight into what to do. It seems especially applicable to the recent thread where lots of people are upset that their opponents are making the mistake of bluffing with air too often.

Long story short: If you know your Villains cards (range) and how he's going to play his cards (range) you don't need GTO. But I bet most people know that less well than they think they do.

OP, please define what you feel GTO poker is. i think a lot of people have different interpretations of it and what you feel it is might help others reply better.

I mean it's sort of saying the same thing you need to know how to play GTO to see where the equilibrium is set before seeing where Vs are deviating from it and then punishing their leaks. As always doing the hard work will get the monies in the end.

People think about game theory/balance issues surprisingly frequently, they just lack the terminology to call them what they are. For example, you'll often read posts where a player says he can't 3bet AA because he'll be turning his hand face up. What he means is that his 3betting range is unbalanced towards strong hands and he's concerned that his opponents will recognize this and exploit him by folding even if they hold very good cards. What's superior about the second way of phrasing the problem is that it shows you what the proper adjustment to the problem is: not to flat with AA, but rather to 3bet bluff enough to balance your range and defend against exploitation (or maybe 3bet bluff enough to convince your opponents not to exploit but not enough to balance your range) (or maybe maybe to counter-exploit your opponents' adjustments by 3betting a ton!). When people talk about "thin" value-bets, they often mean value bets that are theoretically unprofitable but can work exploitively against opponents who call too much and don't bluff-raise on the river. Again, the latter phrasing is more useful, since it focuses your attention on what specifically your opponent needs to be doing or not doing for the play to be correct.

Actual GTO play is frequently not needed in LLSNL games, but understanding conceptually what it looks like can help you understand what your exploitive strategy is building off of can help you be better at identifying exploitable spots and using them. Also, there are spots where you don't know how your opponent plays or you're afraid he's better than you. Being able to play in a way that's hard to exploit in those spots is helpful.

This!

I bought and read Matthew Janda's book around the time it came out.

At the time I viewed it sort of like Sklansky's THeory of Poker.

More recently I read Millers 1% book (he doesn't use the term GTO but emphasizes frequencies and balanced ranges). Reading that made Janda's work seem more applicable.

However even Millers book says once your opponents break the rules you can and often should break the rules to exploit them.

In 1/2 NL for example that happens immediately and constantly. However once you gain an understanding of the concepts in the books I mentioned, the lens through which you view your opponents severe unbalanced play will be different... More of a magnified view with greater clarity.

In short stacked tournament play there are push /fold charts based on equilibrium solutions. These are correct assuming opponents are correctly folding and calling off. Typically in smaller tournaments the players will for example not be calling off as wide as would be optimal so the charts for push fold are not valid.

However knowing those push fold rules and adjusting to the calling ranges of the opponents has value. I view GTO concepts similarly in that understanding optimally balanced play allows us to more correctly adjust to opponents severe unbalance better. Additionally as we encounter tougher opponents we will better understand how our play might be exploited and how to adjust accordingly.

This was my initial reaction too.

A typical 1/3 NL table has upwards of $200 raked off per hour (although admittedly a tighter table will have less). That's going to be hard (impossible?) to overcome at a table described as "full of mostly competent other TAGs".

Gknowwhereyourmoneycomesfrom,imoG

There is a misconception out there in the poker world that losing any hand means you have made a mistake.

That's not the correct way to be thinking about playing poker.

On the other hand, a balanced range means that you're always battling and putting people on the spot.

Do you need to play a strategy to avoid being exploited? No.

Do you need to do any of that in LLSNL to win? No.

This brings up a critical point. Why do you play poker and what are your goals.

If your goal is to be a 1/2 or 1/3 fish fryer and maintain the best win rate you can then the above is 100% appropriate.

If you are like me, poker is a secondary source of income and something that must remain fun and interesting. In that case you take tougher games as they come accepting a drop in winrate. Yes if a game devolves into 9 regs shipping 5 bb pots to their left while 1 bb goes down the rake drain then that might not be fun or interesting or profitable.

But what I hear op saying is that he played in a game that's inspiring him to put more effort into his game... He's asking if a specific direction is a worthwhile investment of his energy and time. Effectively saying "Fold pre" doesn't really address the question.

Let me put it another way. A number of years back I started listening to Bart Hanson's stuff when he was on Deuces Cracked.

Some of his Thin value betting and barreling stuff was unnecessary at 1/2. In fact some of it was -EV (at least as I employed it).

Table select, seat select, play TAG, fold when they play back cuz they have it and make an hourly. That was the general advice.

But listening and studying the other stuff improved how I think about poker and made me a better player (I think). 1/3 and 2/5 are my regular games but I'm not the least bit uncomfortable when I occasionally play bigger.

Also and this is just my opinion, If you sacrifice some EV in the short term playing with a bunch of TAGs or Regs and focus on learning how to exploit them better you will sometimes have the upper hand when you get in lineups with a mix of them and the fish.

I just wanted to point out what I perceived to possibly be a divergence of objectives.

Leaning GTO is fine. However, literally applying it and having it be the primary reason behind your decisions in a low stakes live game won't be optimal.

For 99.9% of players GTO is best applied as a means to find exploits in an opponents game. For .1% of players GTO is used literally to eek out a small edge in nosebleed stakes.

Ok thank you for the responses, very helpful. I think that CammoAndo kind of pointed out my goals in determining whether to learn it or not. I am beating the 1/3 game at a high win rate and can definitely table select better (this session took place from 2am to 8am in vegas so not the ideal time to play with fish). However, I was asking about it in the sense that I am very young and am taking poker extremely seriously right now and want to invest my time the best way possible to move up as high as I can. It seems that the best move is to just work on exploiting regulars by seeing the mistakes they make. However, learning GTO is an option to point out the mistakes regulars make in order to shape an exploitative strategy, rather than trying to play "GTO."

As some others in this thread have tried to tell you, learning "GTO"--or at least what the posers out there try to pass off as GTO--is a waste of time.

One thing that's important to realize about game theory, that most people miss when trying to talk about GTO, is that the entire notion of "exploiting" and being "unexploitable" is potentially extremely flawed when you move from a heads-up game to a multiway game. It is possible to play a NE strategy in a multiway game and still show a negative EV. This is especially true in games with multiple Nash equilibria, where everyone can be playing NE strategies and you can still be taking a bath because you're playing for different Nash equilibria that don't have the same EV for the players (a situation that is mathematically impossible with only 2 players).

Bottom line: if you're playing a game with a $1 small blind, there's no way you should be devoting any effort to even attempting to learn anything about "GTO" at this point, since it's probably not 100% valid anyway and certainly won't help you crush the games you are playing.

If you want to step beyond name-calling, ...

Here's a typical 2+2 thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...oesfd-1546403/

Pokersnowie suggest that the Hero made five incorrect decisions, maybe six if he called a river shove. Why would it be invalid for the OP to learn to open fold KTs or not to raise the river in a case like this?

He should have:
1. Open folded
2. Folded to the PFR
3. Checked the flop
4. Bet the turn
5. Not raise the river

Do you think the Hero made any mistakes? If he did, why would it be wrong to try to learn to stop making them, especially when most of the advice he received here was not to change anything?

au4all, quit trolling please.