And you’re right. Even tho you didn’t mean to be

If you are playing $1/$2, then why in da fuq are you studying charts?

That is silly.

Fundamentals and reads are far more important.

People misimplementing solvers today is no different to the guy who would raise-call off 25bb with AJ from the button against the 72 year old woman with shaking hands in the big blind in 2011 who has a range of QQ+AK+ and be like 'meh standard cooler'

They're a tool that make good players much better but obviously the average recreational player trying to implement them into live play is going to fail miserably

What do you consider fundamentals?

Hi Everyone:

I'm going to come back and go through some of the posts in more detail. But I wanted to make a few basic comments.

Recently, I've read three poker books where the author is often looking at solver results, and they tend to repeat them without understanding exactly what the solver is doing and/or why the solver does what it does. For one example, you can look at my notes for the book 100 Essential Tips to Master No-Limit Hold'em by J Little which you can find here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...ittle-1835015/

The solver can do a lot of things which if you're trying to compute the underlying Game Theory Poker Math will just be too difficult to do. But if you understand how the game theory poker math actually works, you'll be able to understand better why the solver does exactly what it does, and this should help your overall strategy.

Here are a few examples:

1. As the defender, the solver sometimes doesn't seem to call with enough hands. What's often happening here is that the defender is working in some raises, which includes bluff raises, so the defender doesn't need to call as often as appears necessary.

2. The aggressor sometimes makes a range bet on the flop. What's happening here is that the defender won't have enough legitimate bluff catchers in its range, so the solver will now have the aggressor bet every hand in its range (for a particular flop) and these bets will usually be small.

3. The solver sometimes holds back legitimate value hands by not betting them. But this is only done when the bet is large compared to the size of the pot (and when the bet is large the percentage of bluffs is also large). But what's not understood is that when the bet is very small compared to the size of the pot, it can be correct for the aggressor to make negative expectation bets because by checking the expectation will be even more negative.

4. The size of the bet that the solver prefers is linked to how many very strong hands the aggressor makes on the flop. So for an UTG aggressor, his bets will tend to larger on an AK2 flop than a J52 flop.

5. But when the aggressor goes to a smaller bet, he'll frequently bet more hands for value (but a smaller bluffing percentage) than when he makes a large bet (relative to the size of the pot).

And this list is not complete.

Mason

1. How do you determine what calling range appears to be necessary?
2. I don’t think that’s why or certainly not the only nor main reason
3. Legit value hands, how do you determine that ?
4. Preflop aggressor loses to many more hands on J52 than AK2 in a single raised pot. I believe that’s the main reason the size of the bet changes. Solver plays boards and possible run outs more than anything Else

Very good point, it's vs the player who never misses the correct combos but makes frequency mistakes all over the place that you can't expect to make a winrate.

Agree about my wording, although I never made an argument that max exploiting even the slightest deviation isn't the optimal play. That's exactly what the solver do, for example, in that river toygame nuts-air vs bluffcatcher if you nodelock any deviation no matter how small.

Two other things I've seen that just came to mind:

1. GTO allows you to take advantage of your opponent when he calls your value bets and also allows you to take advantage of your opponent when he folds to your bluffs.

2. On hands where you mix between a bluff and a check your EV is exactly the same whether you bluff or check.

3. GTO maximizes your expectation. (This one I'll answer. GTO maximizes your "minimum expectation" or "minimizes your opponent's maximum expectation" depending whether you're the aggressor or the defender.

Mason

You wrote "This severely limits people ..."

While I agree with your basic point, I'm not sure how much it severely limits people. It seems to me that there are a fair number of people who are having at least some level of success who don't have a good understanding of GTO poker math. I know this from the books I've read recently.

Mason

We've put this is a couple of our books. But when you look at statistical distributions, minimums and maximums tend to be broad. This means that if you're reasonably close, there won't be much difference from being perfect.

Mason

But solvers aren't playing a tournament, and in tournament play there are many spots where reducing your EV a little if it reduces your fluctuations by a lot is well worth it. Solvers are playing each hand independently from any other hands, and this might be the explanation for what you're seeing.

Mason

[QUOTE=LivePokerTheory;58575585] Suppose your opponent calls 100 percent of the time. Is your EV the same when you bet versus when you check? I don't think it is.

This is true. But in your example above if you always bet 100 percent of the time and are already against an opponent who calls way too much, he won't have to do any adjusting.

Minor point. If a solver could talk, I don't think it would use the word "perfect." It would say "optimal" and that's something different.

Mason

The Sklansky Hand Groups were designed for limit hold 'em games and not for no-limit hold 'em games.

Mason

No. What GTO does is that it maximizes your minimum expectation or minimizes your opponent's maximum expectation. See the Minimax Theorem (Maximin Principle) and get a visual view of what a saddle point is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_theorem

Mason

Sounds pretty good to me

[QUOTE=LivePokerTheory;58577954] No. There exists a GTO strategy that maximizes your minimum expectation against any specific strategy, including the chicken farmer.

No. The best way to find that exploitive strategy which works best is to understand how the chicken-farmer's strategy differs from GTO, and then to think about what the best exploits might be.

I agree.


I think it depends on how badly this opponent plays. But what you're suggesting certainly won't hurt.

Perhaps. But the strategies that should maximize your EV against bad players in small stakes games probably won't do the same against better players at higher stakes.

Mason

This is a very good post.

Mason

Playing GTO can often increase your fluctuations. So, you may not have been playing as badly as you think.

Mason

Well you are very good, replying to everybody.

Thank you.

You must be one of those people who explains the joke after someone tells one.

In this case, you explained what I already noted: that I was misusing a chart.

I like turtles

has anyone considered the perspective that... 'People DON'T use solvers often enough'?

https://x.com/ChipBurglar/status/1796395786449965212