I remember in Theory of Poker by David Sklansky he writes about a time where he was at a poker game playing against a drunk and he put all of his money in the middle as a 6 to 5 favorite and got unlucky and lost. In retrospect this was a mistake because he didn't have more money he could buy in with and had he waited a little bit he could have found a much more favorable spot to put his money in vs the drunk. At least I'm pretty sure that was Theory of Poker it's been a while since I read it.

Ummmm, no. Playing GTO vs someone else playing GTO would result in a push. But no one plays GTO because it's massively complicated, most people are way off. So if you play near GTO you will be beating your opponent greatly.

Doug is quite the hustler challenging Hellmuth. He even challenged Doyle. Any rich old-school pro who is clueless about online HU HLHE will do.

I disagree. GTO players waste away most of there potential upside by not exploiting there opponents more. Anyone who is a decent poker player gets the general idea of GTO. It has become easy to play against players trying to be pure GTO because it isn't possible. Therefore, trying to get close to it just turns you into a very conventional player. Obviously we are generalizing, but if you are trying to play GTO vs someone you think you are better than, than you are doing it wrong. Now sure if you play GTO vs some fish than your still going to win greatly, but much less than someone who is taking an exploitive strategy vs that same fish.

With all that being said, if everyone played pure GTO everyone would lose to the rake. I'm not saying avoid all aspects. It comes in handy when you don't know what to do, or when you're at a super tough table and you think you're a dog. However, too many players have made themselves worse by becoming GTO obsessed.

i love it when people who fundamentally misunderstand something to the point where they get idiotic ideas like this then go lecturing others

Not lecturing anyone, sorry it came across that way. Just my opinion. What idiotic ideas?

your premise of GTO leading to break even play is only true with perfect gto vs perfect gto



you misunderstood it, you took the "gto will always be neutral vs gto" and thus cranked up the confirmation bias to use that as a reason for believing it to be dumb instead of realizing that nobody in the world plays perfect gto and if they did then the solution isn't to deviate (and lose faster) but to quit poker entirely

gto vs a non gto will always yield positive results in the long run, you can indeed play differently than the population to the point where their solutions are no longer optimal vs your range and playing style, but it's incredibly difficult to deviate that much from general population without playing terribly, isildur1 managed to do that but alas it was short lived as once people had enough of a sample against him they were able to create some counter strategy and that was it for him, never to be heard of again

the strength of gto is best demonstrated by the best players in the world play very close to perfect gto, if you take the play of the most profitable cash and mtt players in the world and compared their decisions to the gto solution it's often the same

this is also evidenced by the fact that a bunch of the people who quickly rose up to the top ranks of poker in last few years were later discovered to be cheating using real time gto assitance

you can deviate from gto and likely make more money vs bad players, but if you take that to the nosebleeds you'll be busto asap because they really can't be exploited very much and at that level it's a race to see who can play closest to perfect

Lots of hot new accounts lately

Yup. Just try one of those GTO trainer programs and see if you can keep it below 10bb/100 for a few hundred hands even against very simplistic betting structures (one/two bet sizes).

The thing is that having a real read stumps any kind of GTO you could ever employ. If Phil has an edge there then he can check-call all the way or use any other silly strategy and still win consistently while looking like a lucky idiot to everyone around.

I am over generalizing to make a point. A perfect GTO strategy is only actually optimal vs another perfect GTO strategy. Otherwise, a perfect exploitive strategy is always going to be more profitable. Both are basically impossible, but playing GTO is wrong vs certain players relative to an exploitive or mixed strategy.

As I said before use GTO when you are in tough spot or vs tough player otherwise not the way to do it in my opinion. I would assume most of the top players are using a mix of the two and are not trying to play perfect GTO.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you put a hand into a solver it effectively assumes that your opponents are also playing perfect GTO. As this relates to Daniel, Phil is using a more exploitive strategy and Daniel could in theory have a better chance of winning if he did the same. Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe Daniel thinks Phil is too tough to figure out and he need to try and go full on GTO.

no you don't get it

you don't solve in a vacuum, you solve for your opponent, what pio will do varies dramatically depending on what information you give it about your opponent, if you were to properly lock in phil or daniel's exact range, bet frequencies, etc you'd get a better pio solution than whatever you come up with on your own armed with same information

you need to stop guessing here, you clearly don't understand the gto concept and are simply regurgitating what you've heard others tell you

yes, vs some opponents and in some situations, it is in fact better to go for an exploitive line, but the very fact that you have long time nl25 regs suddenly moving up to nl2k in the span of a few months simply because they started cheating using gto rta is all you need for evidence of how deeply wrong you are

proof is in results, look at what the best in the world are doing

I think Daniel's problem was that he wasn't going full on GTO against Hellmuth. He definitely wasn't in the first match, and Daniel himself admitted that he erred in deviating so much from GTO when short-stacked. I don't think he was on full on GTO in the second match either, he looked very sure that he had Phil's game figured out, and wanted to avoid "getting it in as a 6 to 5 favorite against a drunk". Unfortunately for Daniel, the drunk was a 100 to 0 favorite in all the hands where Daniel was bluffed out, and those hands amounted to a whole lot.

I don't think you understand what I am saying. That is practically impossible to know what Phil is doing to an exact, not to mention the fact that he has the ability to change his own betting frequencies, sizes, etc.. Of course if you have ALL the information about a problem and the information NEVER changes than you can solve anything in theory at least....... I guess I was speaking more in a vacuum in regards to GTO and solvers and not taking into account all aspects.

I don't think you understand what you are saying

Lol, yeah this too. I admit I am wrong/ignorant on some things.

Some wires were getting crossed here on my part. I meant to say that a solver assumes that your assumptions are 100 percent accurate or something to that effect.

+1000

I assumed you were making this assumption and specifically addressed this earlier. So you're not even reading the response and digesting it but just thinking of your rebuttal.

You're either too focused on being right about things you don't understand or someone's trolling with an alt account. I'm not going to bother responding any further.

It is pretty funny to watch Hellmuth winning all these matches with his goofy playing style. Interesting how he keeps overestimating his hand strength (typically if it is a premium starting hand) and accidentally bluffs people. Doug Polk challenged Hellmuth to the same challenge as the Negreanu grudge match but there is a very low chance he accepts.

what is the proof that u will beat ur opponent greatly?

100% agree, i think people are so overestimating how much money pure gto wins, its really not much and when u add in the rake things get way closer. i am seeing so many people lose massive amounts of ev for example preflop 3betting their std gto range for like 0.04bb gain instead of flatting and printing money vs the fish in bb and this is just an extreme example.

most profitable cash players, grinded the most, thinking about the game the most and how to exploit the most and the most important got the best table selection

Yeah it amazes me how some of these GTO players have yet to realize that taking a marginal spot is not good because you lose all your potential future value. But nope solver says have to take it so that's it.

its like a gto cult now ) if u say anything about gto not being too effective everyone jumps at u trying to protect their 1000$ expenses on gto tools )

Ya know u can study/play GTO and make exploits when you see fit. It’s not one or the other.
In fact a “GTO” player will have much better exploits, bc they understand the game better. If you have no idea what the optimal strategy looks like, you can’t exploit someone nearly as much. A purely exploitive player is only capable of exploiting the most obvious imbalances. This is like day 1 solver stuff. Node lock and see how the response changes.

I go into some detail about all this stuff in The Theory of Poker Applied To No Limit. If you go to our thread regarding the free promotion before today, Sunday, ends, you can get a free copy mailed to you if you live in the US and agree to write a short review.

For now everyone should understand that if you could somehow play pure GTO and had no physical tells,you would not be the underdog in any heads up match with no rake, if the game was fair. In some simple type games you would indeed only break even no matter how your opponent played. But in most games, GTO makes you the favorite.

The three important aspects of GTO are:

1. You do not try to "read" the opponents hand. You follow the same algorithms regardless of how the opponent plays.

2. GTO does not try to "deceive" the opponent. You follow the same algorithms regardless of your opinion of the card reading abilities or proclivities of your opponent.

(So Phil's skills could obviously not overcome pure GTO.)

3. You could actually TELL your opponent EXACTLY what algorithms you are using (including some well defined randomizing), and he could not use that information to devise a counter strategy that has an advantage over you.

Absolutely, my take was that GTO isn't the be all end all. It's a tool to help, but taken to close to the margins and you risk losing almost all your upside. I believe a mixed strategy is the best approach. Just my opinion.

I think everyone forgets what the T stands for in GTO. It's not a magic wand....