Firstly, their strategy could actually help you rather than hurt you in multiway pots with bad players.

But even if it is only you two in the pot, you need not be intimidated by the fact that any counter strategy different from their's is guaranteed have negative EV in a symmetrical game. Not if you yourself are an excellent player and you use the strategy of early folding the bottom part of what you think would have been his range. If you do that the GTO player or bot will be playing incorrectly from that point forward since GTO strategy assumes the other player is playing the GTO range but your actual hands are better than that. If you play well enough you might even gain back some of the EV you lost from your initial fold. Certainly you don't figure to lose much on the later rounds against his "incorrect" play. If you play the later rounds well, this loss would be restricted to the small (extra) loss you incur when you fold your barely playable hands. If the game is otherwise OK, seeing that a few of these players are in the game should bother you no more than if they were a different flavor of pro. With the World Series coming up I wanted to make sure you don't miss profitable opportunities because you overestimate the power of these new fangled strategies or the intelligence of those who try to use them.

Some tips for playing suspected bots online.

1. Limp the small blind
2. Min donk bet when you have a hand that is likely to check call.
3. Try and instantly act if possible.
4. Develop Sb flat ranges vs all positions.
5. Be aware of tight “bots” or regs flatting MP vs an ep open as it’s usually players colluding and they will likely back-raise with AK+.


Agreed with your post above David, you can “exploit” a gto bot by playing tighter than your perceived ranges so they defend looser and value bet thinner.

Also- if you think you are possibly being colluded against then you probably are.

I see someone's been watching Poker Out Loud!

Never heard of it. Do they pooh pooh GTO? Because that is not me at all. Most GTO detractors go way too far.

Translation: make some deceptive folds to get the opposition to mis-estimate your range early, profit later?

Saying you can counter "GTO" by your opponent estimating your range incorrectly is not news.

Is it possible to have a multi-way game, let's say an unraked cash game, where no strategy for any kind of a bot wins or breaks even? Even without explicit cheating like information sharing or agreed sandwiching tactics by the others? Say the player IP to the "attempted GTO" player plays a bit too aggro, and the player OOP a bit too tight.

In a tournament payout structure it's of course possible to steal EV from the "GTO" player, and also yourself, and donate it to everyone else by spite-calling on a satellite bubble for example. Both the fish and the GTO player lose there.

This doesn't make sense. A GTO bot doesn't play against your strategy, so it doesn't matter what you do. It plays a Nash equilibrium strategy where it can't be exploited. It won't win the most money against your mistakes, but you can't exploit a GTO bot by playing tighter preflop.

I agree with this take, however, you may not be able to exploit a gto bot by playing a tighter strategy, but if you play a tighter strategy you will make less mistakes vs said bot and lose less money as a whole.

Best strategy for human against perfect gto player is to always pick more passive option if hand is indifferent between 2 or more options.

He did even make a point about exploiting gto

So the way to beat GTO is by playing like a nit. Stupid computers never thought of that

Playing tighter pre won't do much against a bot. You need to have specific strategies on postflop based on his stats to effectively counter him (and for that you need to know his range).

It is totally possible to create an edge against GTO players, but i guess you need to at least know a little bit of what he knows so you can deviate in a logical manner.

I've played plo with slanksky 4 times and I think he's seen 3 flops so his story checks out.

^ actually lol

Why not take this strategy to the extreme and literally just play aces. Your opponent will think “there’s no way this guy is LITERALLY only playing aces” and then you’ll table your hand, show aces and win.

By definition, this is not true. If you are playing against an opponent who is playing a perfect GTO strategy, and has no tells for you to use, you can NEVER have an edge. That is the definition of GTO, that it cannot be beaten in the long run by ANY strategy you use. So if you're beating GTO players then either they're not doing that good of a job at playing perfect GTO, or they have tells you are able to use against them.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Only if the GTO player has leaks ie not playing perfect gto. Against some bot thats playing perfectly i have a difficult time seeing where an edge can be found. Also as has been eluded to by others a GTO bot or perfect GTO player if such a thing were possible doesnt give AF what you do. A gto player is trying a play as closely to an ideal as possible. I would assume the best way to beat a GTO player us to get them to engage in an exploitative battle.

lol no you'll just get ran over

I believe that is true in theory, but in practicality no player is capable of playing “perfect GTO”. Think about world class chess, where both players have 100% information, and yet every match doesn’t end in a draw with perfect GTO play on both sides. Same in poker. Guys who claim to know near-perfect GTO, imho, are just using that term to often times masquerade FPS - Fancy Play Syndrome lol.

What you're writing is essentially "against very good players, play a little tighter and then they will make mistakes" which is kind of a lol thing to say

Isn't poker about constantly tightening and loosening your ranges to always be exploiting the opponent? This seems like a fairly intuitive shift to make. If they're tight steal pots with a wider range, if they're aggro play a slightly tighter range and be more showdown bound. As they adjust, you adjust, and variance and decision-making dictates the rest.

You're not going to crack mathbois and GTO wizards with some a-ha moment; you need to put in the time yourself to study so that you understand the level they're on, so that you can deviate from it. The game is math and statistics first, and the guys who've put the time into that are almost always profiting. This,and black Friday, are the reasons the games progress has followed a bell curve. It's a lot of fun to play poker but eventually it edges towards being a solved game, or more bluntly a battle of who can/will study more.

My optimistic reminder would be that if you're reading this thread *no one* you are playing is executing GTO and even pseudo-GTO strivers are ****ing up their ranges/strategies in countless spots (or dramatically deviating to exploit some tendency they think you have or some pool tendency and by definition are now playing a strategy you can profitably counter!)

sklanksy doesnt understand gto

the players he is mentioning dont know what the gto move is multiway, so how could they possibly execute it?

In reality, they are live players that are playing a strategy that they believe is GTO, but is likely NOT GTO.

So against players that are playing tough, we should play fold our shittiest hands.

yes

My strategy against good players is to be nice

If they won’t walk, walk them, but be nice

In theory, a GTO strategy does not assume the opponent is playing a GTO range. It makes no assumptions about the opponents' strategy.

In practice, I have no idea what assumptions players are making to try to play close to GTO.

That being said, your tip may very well be useful, I really don't know. I would also add in, for whatever its worth, that no one is actually playing GTO, they are only trying to approximate it. Some better than others, I'm sure!

Here is the thing: Obviously humans are not capable of perfect play without computer assistance regardless, but also consider the fact that game theory does not function at an optimal level when presented with imperfect information. A poker game with 6 or 8 or even 10 runners is an environment that is awash in imperfect information. I would suggest that it is not actually possible to implement a perfect GTO strategy at a poker table, and I have to be honest, I think the gap between perfect strategy and what these GTO donks are doing is actually pretty wide.

In practice I find that frequently shifting gears and calling off with my bluff catchers a bit more than I used to have both been very simple and effective strategies to counter these GTO donks.

I should note that I focus on tournament poker and I play very few cash games, and if I am playing cash it is mixed games or PLO. I understand that gto play may be more effective within the fixed parameters of a deep-stacked cash game than it is when presented with the adjustments required in a tournament.