Exactly why I moved to playing live mtts only several years ago

Also there is such a noticeable difference these days between $500 rec mtts, and $1k+ live mtts where the online regs bother to rock up. Sadly they seem to remember how to play without HUD too

Another great thread Eggs

If you don’t know the gto strategy you aren’t exploiting you’re just clicking buttons ducy

This discussion is already way outside the scope of what I wanted to discuss because with all due respect fold pre is absolutely bonkers and while I appreciate the comments (really, I genuinely do) there is literally no reasonable range you can give V where it's not an objective error to fold pre.

If you wanna discuss exploitation in this context it should be flatting WIDER than equilibrium because humans playing the blinds are not squeezing enough in terms of freq nor are they squeezing enough lighter stuff. Nor are human OOP openers playing as well as they need to to reach a non-exploitable state.

With that being said, redirecting you back to my question (and adding in a few more)

1. What do you think his open range is? I've given you credible data that people are typically opening 24-28% here. What extraordinary set of circumstances can you have possibly gleaned from this thread that would make you think this player, playing in a $2,650, is departing so egregiously from that pattern so as to make you want to fold pre?


2. Fold pre, OTB, with A9s, facing a HJ minraise, 30bb eff, is definitely being exploitative--that does not mean it's good. What things are you seeing that basically no one else is that makes you want to nit up that hard? Because I'll just reiterate: fold pre is so unbelievable nitty it's kind of hard to fathom.


3a. Why do you think nebulous ideas like "game flow" trump hard data when it comes to making a risky assumption about what his open range is?
b. Are you aware of what a null hypothesis is? Are you aware of how and why one sets a null hypothesis, and how one goes about deciding to reject it? Are you aware that judgments about "game flow" also constitutes a risky assumption--which besides ranges and strategies is among the most important abstract objects poker players deal with, since poker is a game of imperfect information--just one made not with data but with nebulous feelings that may or may not be grounded in reality?


4. How do you propose exploiting someone if you don't know that Nash equilibrium?


5. Do you realize the whole digression about solvers is a complete strawman, that no one in here is suggesting to copy the solver, that the OP and several other posters even explicitly comes to the conclusion that this is an EXPLOITATIVE fold depending on opponent's skill level, are you aware that the point of the OP is to collect thoughts on that EXPLOITATIVE conclusion?

6. You realize your conclusion that this is a call OTR bc better Ax rarely get there--which may be totally correct--is an equilibrium argument, not an exploitative one?

7. What's your preflop strat if you're folding A9s pre? C'mon don't just be the contrarian and say "fold pre" and leave it at that.

i'm not disagreeing with your assessment of their preflop open % - i would like to hear more about how you filtered the data.

the opener having a stack between x/y is not going to give you a representative result.

this looks pretty deep (though hard to tell without knowing buyin chip stacks). could be near the bubble. he has 3 players with roughly 2x his stack behind who may or may not be applying ICM pressure appropriately (would have to presume this is more likely to be the case in 2600s).

filtering correctly is tough since hand histories don't give details about where you are relative to pay jumps.

also seems strange to say that people aren't squeezing enough but then also saying that you don't have much data from bigger buyin tournaments. we'd all obviously expect more squeezes in bigger tournaments. if most of your play is in sunday mid buyin levels your data is going to be way off from the avg player in this field.

Except using an interval like that is literally the ONLY way to get anything close to a representative result--filtering for the exact stack size will return virtually no data--do you see why?

Also it's not the opener's stack size it's the EFFECTIVE stack size--big difference.



Not even close




This is just a natural assumption to make about how humans play and is valid at all buy in levels--humans are limp-dick pussies.

Across the board humans are not VPIPing enough, not 3betting enough, nor xr enough, not squeezing enough, not snapping enough, not bluffing enough, you can take those things to the bank in 99.999% of cases.

More squeezes does not imply an optimal amount of squeezing in any way, shape, or form.

-28-32bb eff stacks (this is exactly what we want, some NARROW interval contained in which is the actual eff stack, narrow enough to be representative of the actual eff stack [you really gonna start going down the rabbit hole of whether 28bb plays substantially different from 30bb or whether 30bb plays differently from 32bb?] but wide enough to give a credible amount [a few thousand] of observations)
-with antes

That's it. That's all that's needed.

The stack size and antes being in play are the only two notable pieces of info available. That and ~125 hands of data on the opener indicating he's very reggish and that we can't reject out data-based null hypothesis about his open range based on our experience with him.

This isn't even true wrt this particular event which was a special $5M GTD that was announced like 8 months in advance and had sattys running that entire duration some massive percentage of this field are satellite entrants for amounts ranging from $.01 to ~$600 i.e. a field full of mostly midstakes players with a dream in their head.



99% of hands are not FT hands this in not an issue

I promise to be DISCRETE when talking about the CONTINUOUS joy this thread gives me

But all jokes aside.. did you call??

No I folded

It is funny though that the guy says fold pre and gets slammed yet then you fold river when you "should" call thus negating a lot of the theoretical profitability of your preflop call

Obviously you are massively indepth with your analysis here but it is kind of ironic. I feel like that's a problem a lot of players may run into as you say "humans are limp dick pussies" if they're going to find too many river folds with certain hands or not raising enough etc

I'm not sure but I think playing "partial gto" can cause a lot of problems especially for those who don't study it comprehensively because they learn they should do X on one street but if they don't follow through correctly on the following streets then that will have a huge impact on the profitability of what they did previously

Not saying I think calling A9s pre is anything except super standard btw but just pointing out that telling the guy it is ridiculous to do so and then finding a fold after you flop really well and then hit the river is slightly contradictory

Raise flop, gii - easy mtt strat lol

Youre comparing "fold pre" with a tought triple barrel all in spot the two arent remotely comparable

And what you say about following through with what youre "supposed" to do isnt accurate either. If youre assuming from the beginning that people dont bluff enough then what youre "supposed" to do is overfold rivers and print way beyond what you should earn in every single other node where your opponents happens to not find a triple barrel because hes gifting you massive amount of equity realization to which you arent really entitled. In fact call river would be losing a lot IF that assumption were correct

youd also have an immediate avenue to extract beyond equilibrium by calling down F because youll see free turns more often than you should and he'll flash exploitably weak decline barrel ranges that can be more efficiently bluffed

Its all dependent on what assumption you choose.

What youre "supposed" to do in real life is adjust your understanding of gto strategy with whatever risky assumptions you think are appropriate.

are you saying you think people bluff at correct frequencies?

Do you always call rivers that improve your combo?

what does flopping well have to do with the river decision?

the reason we may choose to do X on one street implicitly takes into account some notion of average realization across all lower nodes of the tree. But those realizations dont happen in smooth fashion. Its not about being rigid and dogmatic saying "I did X before now I MUST do Y" but about being agile through the tree, adjusting assumptions based on which realization pops up, and hopefully being correct. For example it definitely could be fine to call a street just to fold a later one depending on what happens on those later streets

In this case it could certainly be ok to say ott "I will fold Ac rivers assuming they are underbluffed; Im actually printing in thay case bc I see showdown way more than im supposed to".

what youve said is just an indirect form of results oriented thinking. Its like a "realization bias"--just because something happens doesnt mean it happens often in an absolute sense or relative to how often we might expect it to happen according to some baseline understanding (which is gto)

we have no idea if this realization ive encountered is in practice a suboptimally, exploitably rare node like fold river would imply. As ive said previously, guaging peoples thoughts on that risky assumption is the whole point of why I posted this thread

also i played this hand almost a year ago I hope ive improved since then

I recognize theres a potential chicken/egg problem where someone can say "they expect me to underbluff so I expect them to overfold so Im gonna realize overbluffing"

At some point the thought process just has to be truncated and you just have to take a stand on what youre gonna assume

if you or anyone has compelling data indicating that people are bluffing even close to the correct frequencies then you should share it youd easily win "poster of they year" if that were a thing

in practice it sure seems like in most spots all you have to do when you have a catcher that doesnt have some remarkable blocker properties is throw up you hands without nary a critical thought, say "hes underbluffing", and fold and be OK

this combo DOES have some remarkable blocker properties which is why its such a challenging spot

I dont see a point into arguing people of course every other person makes conclusions for himself and there is almost none right or wrong ... that is the beauty of the game and thats why there are winners and losers