If the last 6 years taught you nothing else, it should have been pretty obvious that most billionaires are out of touch morons, who lucked into having wealthy parents and having influence to exploit labor for profit.

They typically are not "smart", and they definitely are not qualified to evaluate poker skill.

man, i love when people who play poker are immeasurable idiots!

True, but the world in general is full of people who think rich people are smart just because they are rich. And plenty of those rich people think they are smart just because they are rich as well.

I’m pretty sure that chess engines are an iterative process that changes its play from experience. The early bots were terrible, but as they play more and more they converge towards the correct strategy. Not saying this is the same for poker GTO.

I was watching a documentary on the Go AI, and it is very surprising how experimental it is and how it tests out different strategies seemingly just because it wants to try it out. Since AI’s are able to play tons of games before converging on the correct strategy, it doesn’t make sense to think about them as always making the most rational decisions. Some AI’s basically brute force what it thinks is the optimal strategy.

But I think that AI’s aren’t playing the perfect strategy in chess, or else they wouldn’t always be improving. They are just getting better and better.

It's 2022 and some extremely rich and smart people think you can exploit something which is game theory optimal

The human brain continous to surprise

Punctuation is like, so , difficult that it just slows down a stream of words.

To be fair it's a somewhat complicated subject. I remember there was a thread discussing GTO a few years back and there were lots of people (even high profile players), who had a very poor understanding of the concept.

While GTO is by definition not exploitable, human approximations of GTO can be. I think PH understands this. So many players use a rules-based approach to poker, and if you understand what these metagame rules are you can find spots where many players are very exploitable.

Sure this isn't going to work against the absolute best players in the world, who are actually playing a close approximation of GTO. However PH has shown that even in 10k buy in events the fields are still very exploitable.

You contradict yourself in your own post here. Nobody is arguing Phil's ability to crush noobs, they are arguing his ability to exploit GTO itself (something that is by definition unexploitable).

Obviously even the best pros rely on heuristics in game but I'm highly sus that Phil Hellmuth has enough knowledge of these solutions to exploit them.

He wins cause he's a master at getting in people's (especially amateurs) heads/under their skin.

I'm not trying to stick up for the person who said GTO is exploitable. I'm just thinking that what he really meant is that people playing with a rules-based style are exploitable.

Agreed, but literally everyone is using a rules based style, it's just a matter of the intricacy and sophistication of those rules. Except for RTAers of course.

These billionaires (even if generally very smart and informed about most things), are just completely out of their element here and have no idea what they are talking about.

Not drunk degens

Their rules are just whatever gives them the biggest rush

I've been reading about poker strategy for ten years and I still think you can exploit humans who play perfect GTO.

That's wrong by how you defined it.

GTO isn't solved in the vast majority of spots though so you would be technically right, but exploiting the human approximations of those solutions would require you to know and have memorized those solutions and their frequencies. It isn't humanly possible.

Someone smarter than me come and show me where I'm wrong.

This response is weak for a post that begins with "you contradict yourself here". GWF made a post that contained a nuanced thought in regards to Phil Hellmuths continued success post boom. I think everyone agrees that Phil cannot exploit game theory optimal play and it is very commonly understood that he is good at getting under people's skin. So you "corrected " him by implying he said something he didn't, and then offered up the insight that Phil gets underneath people's skin.
You contradicting yourself in a stream of confusion. No one can do gto all the time so when they don't then Phil can exploit them

He likes to complain in an annoying way!

Tell me I wrong!

I may be wrong here, but judging by context my guess is he was actually referring to RTA (which is cheating) but mistakenly happened to call it "HUDs":

Starting at 1:05:12:

As for Hellmuth being the GOAT, lmao.

You just make a single move that throws the GTO robots out of book and they're ****ed

You didn't say anything in this post I'm not sure what I'm supposed to respond to.

I agree that when players deviate from GTO they are exploitable.

Programs will still solve that move to a high accuracy, better than any human could do. Not completely "solved" but solved in a similar fashion to how Stockfish would dunk on Magnus Carlsen.

They will do. In the context of a live game, where the people that are using this robotic negative strategy are the sort that think everybody should play the same way they do, it is irrelevant.

So explain how you think Phil the Thrill Hellmuth is on a higher level than Stockfish?

I agree that he can exploit noobs or even bad players trying to approximate GTO. That was never the claim.

If you scroll up a couple posts, my response was to the person who claimed that you can exploit humans who play PERFECT GTO.

Of course if you have sick "live reads" and are able to get perfect information through that, you will destroy a human playing perfect GTO.

Someone said earlier so if that's your angle then fair enough.

One thing missing from this conversation is the impact on live reads.


It is 100% possible to exploit an opponent who is playing "perfect GTO"..... see their cards. And in live play there are opportunities to narrow your opponents range to a specific portion of the "GTO range" with live tells.

It doesn't matter if your range is perfectly balanced in a spot. If I "know" if you have it or not based on physical tells then it will be fairly easy to exploit you both when facing bets and making bets myself.


I feel that THIS is why they say GTO is exploitable. Now the top level players are all aware of this and have developed robotic timing and movements in order to not give this information away and if PH thought he could exploit his opponents on the high roller scene with live reads then he would play them, especially an egotist like Phil who wants to be seen as the best. Instead he plays with his billionaire buddies who probably give everything away.

Damn you lol.... im typing out my post and post it and see you beat me to the thought.