Some of my notes about GTO (beginners stuff):
People tend to say “he calls too much”. But what defines “too much”? It’s literally GTO. If you dont know whats optimal you just guessing
in order to exploit we need a baseline. Telling someone to play exploitatively means nothing if they don’t have a reference point as to what the optimal solution is supposed to be
This armor analogy is a great way of thinking about GTO vs exploitative.
Basically, regardless of level, the "less GTO" you are, the more "vulnerable" you are to exploit. At micros, they are not aware and as such, you aren't risking anything "taking off GTO armor". It's like wearing a bulletproof vest in a pillow fight with a 3 year old. The offensive side of the coin, though, is taking maximum advantage of how opponents deviate from GTO. The worse they are, the easier it is to make money off them without even knowing a thing about GTO. However, knowing GTO fundamentals enables you to maximally exploit them (as well as to exploit the less obviously exploitable opponents).
So it's good to know GTO but cant take it fully seriously at the micro stakes.
Here's an example of what is optimal preflop range but using it against 2-5nl playerpool would be stupid. When they 4bet it's usually top 2% of the range so we can exploit em by folding most of our hands.
BB range vs BTN 4bet
TT+ 100% shove, calling bunch of suited connectors with low frequency etc.