brandy?

I think to simplify the equation you can say...
Stefan beats Limitless heads up for >10bb/100.
Llinus probably beats stefan heads up for >5bb/100.
Limitless is much better than any zoom500 reg.

3max is a game with more nodes and more knowledge required than heads up.

Thinking you're not gonna get demolished 3handed with those guys is extreme-wishful thinking imho.
The pace might be slower since you vpip less than heads up but really that's your only saving grace.

Rickroll, you said in the high stakes thread derail that Sauce agreed with you in this thread and I was very confused by that, because it seems very clear that he was saying the complete opposite of what you were.

This isnt the point, as Markus pointed out before this isnt like playing some silly game where you just need to hit the right buttons. I've coached bunch of guys playing anywhere from micros to nl40k and there is some correlations but not as much as people think how people perform in trainers/drills. It's like comparing video game simulations to actually driving formula one.

People just underestimate how much work Stefan did vs limitless and how well he knew his game and how to punish him.

Not sure if anyone asked it before, but for people who dont believe in the difference. Why is it that tons of guys spend 5-6 figures on coaching? There is probably even at nl500 a very small fraction of players that haven't had a decent ammount of coaching or been in a cfp.

Jayser1337 vid

thanks for sharing! didnt know he had a yt channel

any midstakes reg would surely get demolished, I don't know how this is even a question since midstakes regs make massive theory blunders all over the place. It'd be like putting a 2000 rated chess player against magnus, magnus would win 99/100 games.

Would clearly lose but the fact there are two sharks in the pool helps the fish as in any hand with all three players neither shark should be too exploitative as that leaves them vulnerable to the other shark.

3 handed there's nearly no multiway pots tho

The hand doesn't need to go multiway postflop.

If NL500 reg opens BTN, shark in SB can't try to 3bet or call too wide or SB open up himself to be exploited by shark i BB.

Also, at HS rake structure, SB should cold call almost as much as he 3bets vs BTN open, so there's actually a decent amount of multiway pots.

yes good points, it would be more of a factor than I first thought

I think the majority of edge is postflop, only in preflop or multiway scenarios would this dynamic happen.

Does a high stakes crusher have such an edge due to playing closer to GTO than their opponent, or are they able to adapt better to exploiting their opponent and playing exploitable themselves? If it's the former than I wonder the point of GTO software when 99% of the player pool is playing nowhere near optimal hence following GTO theory would be wrong.

Definitely exploiting.

I'm a microstake reg, and when I analyzed 35k hands in GTOW, I only lost 2bb/100 to GTO.
Obviously I would lose much more than that vs HS crushers.

You're telling me if an opponent was playing GTO you'd only lose 2bb/100? I find that hard to believe. If exploitation is the best strat against mid stakes crushers, that means they are not playing anywhere near GTO as well.

Hs regs are better in understanding gto hence they come up with better exploits involving future streets. Also they execute better gto/exploit lines and more consistently. Really good high stakes regulars they mask their exploits in a much better way than lower stakes regulars

35k hands analyzed.
Average EV loss per hand compared to GTOW: -0.02 = 2bb/100



GTO only gains EV vs pure mistakes, which is why you can play far from GTO frequencies and still lose no EV vs GTO.

IMHO when big money is involved they're not playing around, pretty sure hs regs have huge database of hands, they will analyze your play and they will know what you're doing at the table so, it's you who needs to play GTO vs them to not be exploitable otherwise they will crush you if they find any leaks in your game

slightly tangential question: I saw a graph where Stefan hasn't really been winning for around the last 2 years. Is he actually still a top player?

what does 'pure mistake' mean?

It means you are making mistakes 100% of the time, rather than mixed with correct plays.

Pure mistake is a decision that GTO would never make, like open folding AA, because the EV of raising AA is much higher than folding AA.

Frequency mistake is to make a decision that GTO does sometimes make, but at the wrong frequency.
When GTO mixes between two different decision, the EV of those different decisions are exactly the same.

For example:

If GTO player is betting 1x pot on the river with nuts or air, GTO defense is to mix 50% call and 50% fold.
But we can call 100% or fold 100% and it doesn't change our EV, because it is a frequency mistake (not a pure mistake).
If we call 50%, our EV is 0.
If we call 100%, our EV is 0.
If we call 0%, our EV is 0.

So you can deviate hugely from GTO frequencies without losing any EV vs a GTO player.

I would imagine edges are so close amongst the top players that long break even and losing streaks are possible even for a winning player. Plus the game could be advancing so fast players that were the best last year have fallen to tier 2 or lower

why is it so special? This guy also lose 2bb/100 vs GTO and he had -4bb/100 at nl500

I really doubt the GTO Wizard EV loss is accurate at all

This is all 10-25nl when I barely studied any theory and would've surely gotten wrecked by even 500nl regs