I have had a long break from poker (almost 5 years) during which I got married and got a better paying job which made me forget about poker for a while. I slowly came back out of "retirement" a couple of months ago.

I used to play 50-100NL on PS and here are the things I have noticed in the reg pools :
- There are many more small bets on the flop and the turn. It was common to bet small on the river when I played but small bet sizes on early streets where unusual. I suppose this is PIO solver's influence.
- Much larger 3bet sizes, especially OOP. No idea where that comes from but it is certainly effective at killing the profitability of set mining.
- I am under the impression regs are getting it in preflop with much weaker hands than what I am used to. But it could be a false impression based on a small sample.
- A lot less cold calling.
- If you don't use PIO, you are old school and get no respect on forums anymore. Solvers seem to be the last word to any poker discussion (to my regret).
- small preflop raises of 2bb-2.5bb in all positions have spread from midstakes (where they were common in 2015) to micros (where they were uncommon).
- Poker rooms have found new ways to kill the games (no surprise there) for short term profit with antes where no one ever asked them, small rake increases without meaningful rakeback, no rake caps, new poker variants that look like rake traps to me (short deck poker with an ante).
- no HU tables anywhere
- Goodbye to 24 tabling. I never did it but I regret that this option is gone.
- Poker boom in Asia.

Anything I have forgotten?

That being said, if the games have become harder it is not immediately discernable but I may have to swallow my words in a couple of months once I have a bigger sample.

Yeah that's pretty much it.

Decent summary. Re: small bet sizes I think it's more than just solvers, people broadly use small bets where they don't have a defined strategy on a flop and there's a lot of scope to exploit that because if it's a flop where it's not a reasonable strat they're almost certainly underdefending against raises.

I have to say the small bet is not an awful idea because if you are not aware of how much you need to defend against it, it is very easy to overfold on dry boards. But your comment is well noted (thank you). I will experiment with aggressive raises.

thanks very much OP. i appreciate it..... there are many people who constantly contemplate getting back into poker more. so it's useful for us.

from what i see out there (poker live streams), i think you are correct on most of that. probably all of it, but i'm not knowledible on all of it.

small opening raises and aggression with reraises (you mentioned OOP. i have no idea on that)...... seems like there aren't players who have no good reason to be in the hand. the old loose passive fish is either gone or smartened up alot. makes sense as who's going to fund their poker account each week with money adding up to 10's of thousands a year and pretend they are break-even or better player. B&M maybe. not online

the small bet is interesting...... people get distracted from playing too many table. maybe fold.......... also, what are your options with small bet in front of you? call, fold, raise. you are often worried its a trap to get you to raise. if you don't have a good hand or draw, i think alot of people just fold.

i hated the old 24 table world, so in theory increases in ante's are good. make people play more hands......... rake/antes/etc. do add up quickly

is there no room for a moneyball approach in poker? if everyone plays X way, maybe i can play smart Y way... i realize it's all GTO/unexploitable etc in theory.... i have to think this through. and as i said, GTO is in theory and people aren't perfect or anything close to it.

On an average 50z table/hand on Stars I'd expect to have about 1 legit whale (40/10 ish) and 1 weak player (21/13 ish) on average. It's not like they don't exist, it's just that you won't find tables on most sites (excepting people who can get into good clubs on appsites) which are super-attractive.

This is overly simplistic an approach. Modern poker is played range vs range. People like to simplify to one bet size to ensure they're playing a reasonably credible and unexploitable strategy, and when they have a range advantage (which will usually be the case in the most common postflop spot - the BB defending an open raise from a player with position on them), betting 1/3 pot with most of their range approximates to optimal strategy at least to an average extent for the post part.

This is exactly the way everyone wants to play. However, there are a lot of losing players who call themselves 'exploitative' players because they Dunning-Kruger themselves into thinking that their opponents are just stupid. Knowing how to optimally exploit your opponents improves substantially on 'GTO' in theory, it's just that you need to know what an optimal strategy looks like in order to identify how your opponents are deviating from one.

i live stream alot of MTT's and have played a few B&M tourneys last couple of years.

i see all kinds of people fold to really small bets on the flop or beyond.... of course this is probably short to medium stacks vs. cash games.

pushing his own agenda since April

I regularly see 3 bet OOP from the blinds that are at least 4x. I am pretty sure sizes above pots were unusual 5 years ago.

It is strange how I miss the 24 tabling nit! I feel removing this and the rakeback is one less way for poker players to become rich (or at least to sustain themselves) but also one less way to dream. There was something fascinating about looking at nanonoko's graph or following p0krparty's madness thinking "it could be me too!"

A small 0.1bb ante is more or less equivalent to playing with 90bb without antes, stack wise. Shorter stacks, smaller edges, smaller win rates but more VPIP and more rake. I see why a poker room would want to force antes but I don't see many reasons for a player to rejoice and I certainly don't (and vote with my money by not playing in them). If there were no rake as it is the case in a tournament, I wouldn't mind them at all. I could go on but I don't want to turn this thread into a lengthy debate.

While some exploits can be grasped intuitively, I have to say I have been very surprised by the cbet frequency and sizes preferred by solvers. That takes exploitation to another level.