@ Rickroll. The blinds in that hand are 200-400 with 150 per player ante. changes all ranges involved.

Fixed it for you.

* * *

There is a ceiling to excellence in play, and that ceiling is the Nash equilibrium, i.e., GTO. The players at the top of the heap are closer to that ceiling than the regs, but the gap between them is fairly small.

Oftentimes the difference between the truly great players and the merely good ones is that the good ones have gotten good enough to live comfortably and stay there, but the ones who have become great got there by putting in the hours doing the work.

The belief that the great players are somehow transcendentally good is a mental game leak, an obstacle to growth mindset, because it sets greatness aside as something that is unattainable to ordinary schlubs like you.

(I mean the general "you," not you in particular, rickroll.)

And Linus is a perfect example of someone who wasn't a born crusher, since he only posted something like 2.5bb/100 over 1 million hands at NL200.

I mean theoretically this might be true, but it rests on the assumptions that both ranges and strategies are fixed, known to 100% accuracy, and never deviated from. In a practical sense, isn't it fairly trivial to destroy these assumptions by simply contracting or expanding your ranges, or changing your betsizes, in order to get off any known game tree?

Also, didn't Stefan beat Limitless for like 12bb/100? It's pretty odd for me to think of Stefan as being some GTO wizard.

I don't think GTO would be the ceiling unless you are playing a GTO Bot. The ceiling would be max exploiting all of your human opponent's leaks that they might not even know they have.

I also don't think the gap between regs is fairly small. There are a number of instances in HU/6max where elite regs have very high winrates against other regs.

Overall, the matter of fact way of speaking doesn't work in a game of near infinite complexity. There is no hard cap between the skill level of two humans and the winrate one can generate.

I'll just say I had a winrate playing SH with a lot of players widely considered to be amongst the best but as soon as Stefan or Linus was included in the battle my winrate flipped to about -3bb/100. Fairly, the sample size was probably only 50k-100k hands but I think its demonstrative of the gap between even top 25 and top 2. When you get locked in a cage with those guys with no fish to supplement your winrate; things can get dicey really quickly.

How about a specific example? In any case there could be some intransivity involved in this question. There could be B+ mid stakes players who seriously study what a bot would do and stick fairly close to that in their smaller games and thus don't match their A rated expert exploiting weaker players, colleagues. But they would less to the elites.

Sklansky you're still stuck playing live 1/2 limp 3 betting KK against droolers and too far up your own butt to use any modern study tools to get any better, and afraid to post your results for your book, I think this discussion may be beyond you

If I was great at this stuff I'd be a great player instead of a middling reg myself, so my advice would be to check some hands posted in the HS hands thread or to watch some breakdowns on YouTube of nosebleed hands from guys like Uri Peleg.

With that said, great regs will be able to identify weaknesses faster and with more nuance, and will be able to push villains into those lines at higher frequency by manipulating their own mixes.

For example (just something simple off the top of my head), if we know a villain is betting turns normally and underbluffing a river spot, we can overfold the river. But more sophisticated players can widen their turn calling range to capitalize on river underbluffing and capture additional ev that way. Even more sophisticated players might manipulate their flop ranges by changing what they x/r vs cbet to guide certain hand classes into and away from the river node.

Top level regs will have a wide array of these adjustments (many of which are far over my head) to lead regs into exploitable nodes more often and capture additional ev. They'll also be more knowledgeable and experienced in all the side lines (for example, stuff like donks, flop 3bets, and so on) and will likely capture additional advantage in side line nodes that msnl regs won't really be able to combat. They'll be able to preemptively tailor side line ranges to exploit likely mistakes (for example, overfolds or lack of raises) the msnl reg is making, and the reg probably won't even be aware of the exploits for a long time.

This is not some clairvoyant godlike perfect unattainable play, it's just a testament to deep understanding of the game forged through years of intense work, study, and high-level competition. Nobody is saying these guys are perfect, unbeatable players, but if you compare a top 1% or even top 0.01% performer to the absolute best in the world, there is going to be a large gulf there. Poker is no different.

Hmm I think the main issue is that there aren't solid GTO 500nl regs, they're all making massive/predictable mistakes and deviations across the game-tree, and the few that aren't are going to move up stakes extremely fast.
Beating 500nl requires a high level of expertise and intelligence but the gap between that and a world-class player is extremely large.

I don't think 500nl regs are making massive mistakes across the game tree. The 500nl regs I know are pretty solid in at least most of the main lines, have good vision over standard ranges and thresholds, and often have some decent idea of common pool mistakes they adjust their strategies to exploit.

Of course they aren't perfect in every line, but top 500nl regs will be pretty decent in most nodes I think. It's just that "pretty decent" isn't good enough when you're getting actively exploited by an elite player, and that elite players will be able to funnel into the lines where the 500nl reg is weaker.

"Stefan the Predator"

Dancelanas responded well. What struck me was just the depth of understanding of every node and its implications down the tree. Ability to instantly pinpoint the difference in response vs b10 and b25 in some node. Like I'm sure 500nl regs would figure that out, but not within seconds 5 beers in.

Magnus Carlsen said on Friedman's pod that modern elite chess players always take suboptimal lines early on to push the game in nodes unknown for his villain.

Modern elite poker players do the same, Stefan being the prime example. No MSNL reg is capable of doing it well.
--

Wow Sklansky is clueless jesus. Time comes for us all I guess.

Sounds like

But you’re not taking full advantage of the non-bluffer if you
simply fold whenever you don’t have a profitable call against what
he’s representing (although that strategy is a lot better than the
GTO strategy of often calling with mere bluff catchers even
against this player). To take full advantage, you should not play
your normal game. Specifically, you should play more hands
against this opponent than you normally do.
Players know to loosen up their starting standards against
very loose opponents. But most don’t realize that because of the
possibility of saving money not usually saved, they should also
loosen up against the non-bluffer.

Page 55: Small Stakes No Limit Holdem

Just to make it clear. I am not disagreeing with anything Duncelanas said. I am just pointing out that a hypothetical near GTO player would do worse at mid stakes than the best midstakes players and would lose to the elite players. But he would lose a smaller amount to the elite player than the midstakes expert who is not as familiar with GTO recommendations. In other words, if the bet was who would lose less to an elite, it is theoretically possible that you would pick the player who was the underdog if it was a simple game between the two of them. Few if any games have this odd aspect to them. Maybe boxing.

What sklansky says is right.

This is relatively true, but in reality it's also true that as players improve they study and learn a lot of gto, and a big part of the improvement loop is developing a deeper and more accurate understanding of theory.

There might be a few, but there aren't a ton of players who are super robotic and very accurate but suck at exploiting. For the most part, the top regs at any stake will have a better understanding of gto than middling regs, and they will be better at using that understanding to identify and exploit mistakes.

My example does sound a bit like that book excerpt, but it's clear that both changing flop x/r composition and continuing wider on turn are more nuanced that "villain is passive so I can widen my ranges." The latter is a very basic adjustment. The best players in the world will make adjustments across the whole game tree for more involved reasons.

Not disagreeing. Just wanted to show off that my 76 year old brain can still think of rare exceptions to the mid stakes general idea as well as write about a tactic that is similar to what you ascribe to elite players in a book that some seem to think is simplistic.

That's a great point. Reverence for people who are in certain positions is a big mental barrier. You see it with people famous for their ideas. they're worshipped but not read and understood in many instances.

I think there is a way to pin down the BB/100 win of the elites vs good in a three way game. For example:

Suppose that the game is 10 20 blinds and the stack is 300 each hand.

Suppose that the good always folds in the blg blind when his EV is worse than minus 17 (in a game with two players his equals), folds hands in the small blind with an EV of minus seven or worse, and folds on the button when his EV is less than plus three dollars.

For computer boys:

How many extra hands does he fold compared to what he would play vs equals,

What are those hands? (An answer for the original question not needed but interesting)

Would the hands he still plays show a profit against the elites (I'm guessing yes if the elite doesn't know he is folding those hands, but maybe no if he does know.)

If you can tell me the answer to these question or questions where the numbers are tweaked, you pretty much have the answer to the original question if the good player is willing to swallow his pride and fold hands preflop that he would never fold in his regular game.

This does not answer the original question. Nothing answers the original question or ends the thread in any provable way. It's a hypothetical. This is just an arbitrary (but probable) set of calculations to make. It's a guess, because there is no formulaic way to answer the original question. This is a great discussion and thank you for your contributions to it, but you're not going to end or win or solve the thread. It isn't a solvable problem.

I don't really think this is true, at least it does not have to be.

Nobody said that pretty much anyone smart enough to beat MSNL can't become elite player.

It's not unattainable, it's just really hard and not worth it for most. AFAIK all the elite players just outworked everyone else. And they became crazy good. And they paid the price.

That's a fact, not a limiting belief.

What most people realize as they get older is that they value other things than being elite in something. Balance, family, friends, seeing your kids grow up, keeping you health are all more important.....None of us need all that much money.

Fact is, most people don't want to actually pay the price to be Warren Buffett, David Goggins, or even to have a sixpack year-round etc. And that's absolutely reasonable, rational decision.

I probably have the highest winrate on stars 500/1k over the last couple years. (0.5 under double digits 400kish sample)

I would happily bet me losing over 5bb 3handed against the best in the world. At the minimum. This game is levels, and after having coaching / listening from some of the best, 500 regs ( and myself) are quite a bit behind. It's not even just theory, being able to execute correctly whilst on 10bi downswing is huge. When you know they're theory sound and exploiting sound, u just feel lost after a bit.

Saulos 500/1k gang arnt exactly good and probably get crushed more than me. Lol at his c4p bot argument. They're good at exploiting 500nl average player that's it.

How do you guys think a player like Phil Ivey (who absolutely crushed everyone on Full Tilt) would do versus the best online nowadays?

a) If he wasn't allowed to study at all, just instantly sitting down with Linus and Stefan.
b) If you gave him a month to study with solvers and observe his opponents before playing
c) Would he have a better or worse chance in omaha?

phil ivey lost on pokerstars too btw, when he was crushing FT
but in all cases above he would lose substantially