I'm somewhat upset about a hand that I just played in. Won't be too descriptive, because it's not important.

I raised from the SB to isolate a limp from the CO. He then called three streets of over 2/3 pot, and showed down K4o to take the pot with a pair of Kings. This was on a 4 to a straight and flush completed board.

I'm more interested in playing a GTO style than exploitative, but is that my only hope at the micros?

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Some are bad because they call too much. Others are bad because they call too little. It is up to you to figure out what your opponent is.

That's the worst best generic advice i've ever heard

"It's up to you to figure out how to figure out the answer to your question"

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A guy called you down with a pair of kings and a lousy kicker. A hand you couldn't beat. The answer to your question is - Don't bluff calling stations.

But but but the GTO approach says that you need to do this for balance...

Please define GTO and why it would be effective against the micro field?

GTO means Game Theory Optimal. The essence being playing in such a way that you cannot lose, no matter the opponent.

GTO for NLH isn't known, but the idea is there. Having a solid strategy, and playing that, rather than making major adjustments to your game (which are exploitable).

So I'm just wondering if I'm better off just playing the local live 1/2 game, then trying to play good poker for nickels and dimes against people who don't seem to care about the money.

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Wow, sounds like a winning strategy when the worst you can expect is to break even. Sign me up. This works in the micros, right?

The reason you are losing to people is because you are playing worse than them. That's how poker works.

You have 0 idea what you're talking about and justifying bad bluffs as GTO is spew and about as bad a starting point you can have as a poker player because your starting point should be one of realising you suck and wanting to get better rather than you thinking you have the game solved.

Why don’t you play higher stakes if you want to play against better opposition?

There are 3 buttons available to online players: fold, call and raise. Apparently you have trouble beating players who use only one of those three buttons. I doubt you have more success against somebody who is also able to utilize the other two buttons, but I might be wrong.

FWIW, the whole “you can’t lose money playing GTO” applies only to rake-free settings. Take a look how high the microstakes rake is and reconsider that statement.

Wow, thanks for the positive feedback guys!

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What you are going to find here is that most people here in BQ are not in favor of GTO solutions for lower stakes games becasue

1. They don't exist
2. They are designed to be unexpoitable, which, by corollary, means they are also unexploitive. in other words, a perfect GTO solution (which, again doesn't exist) would show a negative ROI equal to the rake.
3. They are difficult to understand intuitively and go counter to many, fundamentally sound tenets of poker strategy
4. The number of games where a GTO solution is optimal is vanishinbgly small.

In other words, you are sitting at a microstakes table where people show their lack of balance by badly overplay weak holdings on a sopping wet board. A GTO style play would guarantee that you win the least amount possible against these players.

Didace's advice was on the money. When playing small stakes games against unbalanced players, identify their leaks and exploit them. I am not sure GTO should ever be used (there is some debate on that), but I am quite certain it should not be used against players this far out of balance.

Oh, and don't bluff sopping wet boards at microstakes.

Microstakes are very easy to beat. You get a lot of those players who call with any two. Just don't try to bluff these players and get the max value with strong hands.

Fixed your post to what I believe you were asking.

Live vs online? This question has been asked for at least a decade. Most everyone believes that playing live (at least the last coupla years and near future) is the most profitable path to take.

In both venues, GTO will not come into play until you play a much higher stake than 1/2 live or .25/.50 online. The general statement BEFORE GTO became the latest "craze" was "move up to where they respect your raises".

If you want to practice GTO, I would think you are going to need to step up and play much higher levels than micros. The learning curve will destroy most bankrolls. GL

Some of these responses are overly harsh imo.

That said, I would imagine that the runout was one that hero shouldn't have been triple-barreling with his actual hand. You shouldn't do a lot of bluffing on connected boards vs fish, or even regs.

If I’m not mistaken, the whole point of learning “GTO” is to determine how players are deviating from such a strategy, and exploiting them accordingly

Not all that necessary at micros (on most sites), since everyone is making mistakes, so you don’t need to look at a GTO strategy to figure out where people are bleeding chips

It’s annoying when a fish calls your bluff with a hand any decent player would fold, but that’s a good reason not to pull huge bluffs against unknowns without some solid information about the player or the pool. Paying close attention to your opponents is what wins you money