What I should’ve said is that while not optimized for low stakes live it will still give the vast majority of players a higher winrate than what they are currently doing

Like for 95% winners, gto unoptimized for 1/2 and 1/3 will make them more money

Maybe so. But reading this upcoming book seems a lot easier and less expensive (and more enjoyable) than learning to work solvers and paying what seems to be a lot of money for it, especially for people who are playing as a hobby.

I don't know why an intermediate who is on the "2+2 Forums" yet hasn't ever read a 2+2 book would even be bothering to open this thread.

The majority of the most popular poker books ever are published by 2+2. It would be very unusual for someone interested in poker books not to have ever read one, especially if they are on the 2+2 forum.

Uh, that was my point. People are playing it for pleasure.

Maybe.

The winrate might be higher at $2/$5, maybe. It is debatable simply because the play at $1/$2 or $1/$3 deepstack is terrible. It is unreal.

But, let's assume that you are correct and $2/$5 is better.

It also comes with other requirements to play. A bigger bankroll is required. A player has to carry around more cash to the casino. They may have to explain larger significant losses in a single session to a spouse. Etc.

There are plenty of reasons for fairly good winning players to play $1/$3 instead of $2/$5 and benefit from this book.

I say that as someone who generally plays $2/$5 as a winning amateur part time player.

There are also lots of very high paying technical jobs that do not require soft skills. Especially in this day and age when everything is online and a programmer can read a requirements document listen in on a requirements gathering Zoom recording and barely ever have to talk to someone. Or a QA tester can create and run test scripts whose only output is a database entry of errors of the code. Or an actuary or underwriter who only communicates with others through simple form requests.

I agree that there are lots of forms of intelligence, but a strategic aptitude is still a strategic aptitude.

Great job demonstrating you do not understand how other people live.

Why be a suckered? Why not get a job in finance where you could earn real money?

I find myself in a really weird place on this thread. I completely understand the premise of this book. There is a huge audience of players who play poker as a fun diversion. They have no desire to be a pro. They play for entertainment on their nights off. More often than not they have a drink or two (or three) while playing.

Poker is a hobby, not a moneymaking endeavor.

Those people will benefit from this book. They will. Most $1/$2 or $1/$3 games are stupidly hilarious. I am quite sure that this book will help them play better.

That said, I have played $1/$3 with David Sklansky at the Wynn. The game is unbelievably soft. Yet I am quite sure I have a far better win rate at the game than he does. He is a winning player for sure, but only because he is mostly nut peddling tourists.

A thourogh reading and understanding of Theory of Poker is required, but reads are far, far, far, far more important. Players at those soft games wlll literally tell you what they have so much of the time.

Calling off three barrels with top pair, mediocre kicker for 100+ big blinds is perfectly reasonable against many players in those games. Sure, a nut peddler would be right in telling you that there are better spots to get it in, but they are leaving lots of EV on the table by folding. There are also times where folding a monster is easy.

As mentioned many times in this thread it is easy to come up with odd, but smart plays given opponent tendencies, but that is the whole point of these games.

Reads are everything at that level because they are so plentiful and accurate.

Get a solid understanding of fundamental poker and then learn how to understand how and why people are playing the way they do.

Play this strategy at the wynn and you’ll get wrecked. I’ve played there for ten years. You both are clueless to what you’re talking about

These aren’t smart plays. They are dumb plays


Gto will help you win double or triple the amount this book does.

Gotta agree with Limon on this one why play in a game where the only people who can make any real money are the casinos. Don't forget on top of the outlandish rake of low stakes live you're also expected to tip the dealer every time you win a pot. If my only choices were play 1-2 live or get a job guess I'm putting my application in

I don't think there is mathematical way to prove the "Double" or "Triple" claim, but, there are mathematicians here who I'm sure will attempt to prove me wrong.

I had to pull one of my 2+2 books to verify this quote, but David Sklansky once wrote:

I will concede though, in my anecdotal experience, the games at Wynn seem to attract a more serious player than other card rooms in Vegas (and USA). If I have a table read that everyone is taking the game seriously, I'm less inclined to deviate from what I believe is an optimal strategy against the specific table. Maybe I change my mind after reading this book and show up at Wynn and donate a bunch of cash to guys. LOL

To your specific post, if you want to be a long term winner at low stakes. Game Selection, Game Selection, Game Selection. Not discounting GTO, but to the point others have made in the thread. I'll gladly pay the NYC underground rake to play against people who will call all three streets with bottom pair "Just to keep ya honest" whereas I don't see that too much in games that I would consider serious, even at the 1/3 level. If you guys know where these games are, let me know. I have some free time in the next few weeks.

I continue to look at this from the perspective of Chess. The top engine move might be the best mathematical move, but that doesn't mean that the 4th or 5th best move isn't terrible. You opponent might be well prepared for you to play the 1st, 2nd or 3rd best moves, but they may not have a game plan for the 4th or 5th best move. If you can use a non-optimal strategy to put them in a spot where they can not, with any accuracy, determine your correct hand range, isn't the whole goal of poker?

Sklansky lost $3 in that Kings hand, by the way. There are weak players who would do better if they adopted a small-loss approach for playing KK.

I think in poker the power of the hand comes first, disguising it comes second. But even when disguising, the power is a big factor, avoiding trash and trash plays.

It's pretty interesting reading everyone's take on the excerpts to this game. My objections basically come down to this.

In order to write a game changing book on live play, you need to basically do what Hand2Note does but in a live arena. MDA has completely revolutionized the game and you can apply this to live play as well (disregard people that say live and online are completely different animals, they are not correct).

My problem with the excerpts is that they are far too anecdotal to build serious strategies around, good poker strategies come from data. Lots of data. You would need to play thousands of hours live (ideally more than one person to 2x/3x etc the data archiving) and carefully record the results. Only then can you have high confidence levels in your strategy (i.e. your book).

We can do much better than Anecdotal Evidence in 2023 by using online methods and transferring them to the live arena.

If you should never make a sub-optimal play in poker, why even play in a traditional game at all?

Just take the money out of poker, give everyone an ELO rating like chess, so we can focus on the true point of the game, which appears to be... "Never deviating from the most mathematically correct decision irrespective of the current game state."

I'm obviously being sarcastic; but if Replay Poker is still a thing, something like this might be a better option for a person who does not have it in their DNA to deviate from their perceived perfect GTO strategy.

Just like chess, there's really no money in replay poker (all of the replay poker sites I know of have become abandonware), however, it might be a better option for those looking for alternatives to the traditional casino raked, low stakes cash games which are bad for all of the reasons listed in this thread.

It would also validate your perceived perfect GTO strategy since replay poker players win 100% of the time when they play the same hand, more optimally than their opponent.

Example of abandonware replay poker site from 10 years ago.

Low variance, relatively stress free, hang with folks we know from years at the casino of our choice, watch a ball game or two while we play cards, all while making a mild profit while pursuing a fun part-time hobby.

Emphasis on poker is supposed to be fun, BTW. I fear many 2p2 posters have lost sight of that.

Yeah but I guess dude45 is putting his application in lol

Maybe they never had sight of it, but it seems as if most have a certain viewpoint and don’t have the ability to consider why some may prefer to play 1/3 even if they know or suspect their hourly might be higher in 2/5 (or higher)

I enjoy live poker much more than online for all these reasons. But online has helped my live game a ton.

Game selection is great when you don’t have good strategy. If you need to game select at 1/3 or 2/5 you suck. You can’t game select at 5/10 for the most part. Don’t learn a shitty skill. Learn to be the best or second best at every table

No, you can not tell the solver what players will do with flush draws, or other specific hands, and then tell it to adjust for that preflop. Actually, in principle you could, but it would be overwhelmingly complex and tedious to set up the simulations. What cou can do is solve for how to adjust postflop against these and any other leaks that you can formulate explicitly. There is also a solver that has built-in oppponent models (various degrees of call station, aggro, weak-tight) for postflop play, which allows you to easily adjust postflop strategy against general tendencies. You can also hand-craft opponent postflop models yourselves in any solver.

For example, vs a moderate call station, how do you adjust your CBet strategy on the flop? How do you adjust your valuebetting strategy on the river vs a very weak-tight player? And so on.

NB You can easily solve for preflop adjustments based on opponents' preflop leaks. Rake effects can also be included. For example, you could construct a loose-passive model game where everyone except you 3-bet half as often as they should, and coldcall twice as often as they should. Such a simulaton would assume perfect postflop play, but it would still be very useful.

When it comes to your pot-limit example, you can of course construct all kinds of new games with peculiar rules that solvers can't handle. And as interesting as that might be, academically, it's not really interesting for those who are playing to make a good monthly. Although, I do see the value in learning to adapt to new games on the fly in private games.

That said, your pot-limit example can be solved for both Omaha and Hold'em. We've had Omaha solvers and multiway solvers since 2016.

You speak as if you live down the street from a cardroom with hundreds of mouth-breathing bad regs who have their wallet open, begging you take their money. Maybe this is true, I played a bunch at the Commerce back when I lived in SoCal, so you may very well have that luxury.

I'll chill with the sarcasm. Sorry

Game selection is the strategy, for me, at least.

I have 1/3 and 2/5 games running about an hour away. Against these specific sets of players, it is not worth it to drive 2 hours round trip, accrue 150 miles of wear and tear on my car at the IRS suggested rate of .60 a mile for maintenance costs, pay X for gas, pay X for tolls, pay X for valet parking (I'm injured), just so I can sit down and make on average, what? $20-$30 an hour?

Years ago, I was in Denver but ended up spending the entire weekend in Black Hawk. It was clear within about 30 seconds of sitting at my first table that I was the only sober one there... and it was like this all weekend, everyone was drunk and stoned and I turned $200 into $3,000 quite literally by nut peddling. Had these games been a bit tougher, I would have probably went hiking, or actually went outside and enjoyed some fresh Colorado air, which is a win in itself. I only drove out there to check out the games and go on the trail, but the games were soo good, I ended up playing poker all weekend.

Contrast that with my local cardroom which, no offense, is a bunch of OMC promo grinders who sit around and literally talk poker strategy to each other. They aren't bad players, and these games aren't hard.. they are just boring AF and not worth my time and the games constantly break and the games are super slow, etc etc. More than one way to look at game selection.

I'd love to go back to Denver and hopefully be the only sober guy at the table again, but that was probably me just getting super lucky.

Wow, there's one poster in here that has a very accurate username

You don't need to choose between these things!

If your goal playing 1/3 or 2/5 is to end up at 5/10, game selection is extremely important. Obv you need good strat as well, but if you are the second best at a table making $10/hour and can move to a table where you're 3rd best making $20/hour, that will help you move up faster.

Nope I play online as well as bet sports and invest here and there