I've never been able to play on PokerStars since zoom was created, and at NL$200 rush I just played like I did in normal cash games.

GTO will obviously crush at any limit, so I think you need a pretty good reason to deviate from what you think is GTO. Even against exploitable opponents, the optimal line will usually be best. In other words, hands that work well as flop raises against GTO opponent's will usually work well as flop raises against weak opponent's too. The same goes for flop check-calls, check-folds, etc.

Right now I'm playing at what I consider soft tables and I'm just doing some basic exploitative stuff (opening the button too wide, folding a bit too much to 3-bets) and for the most part trying to play what I think is closer to optimal post-flop. More specifically, I'm putting a very lot of emphasis especially on trying to keep dominated hands in my opponent's range post flop as well as make high equity hands fold. Against weak players especially the amount of times I've won a small or medium sized pot with ace-jack high or ace-ten high is pretty crazy, but a GTO opponent would never let me win some of these pots (he'd know he needs to bluff all worse hands, but weak opponents don't always do that).

Ok. Then shouldnt it read "Against players who refuse to flat 4-bets" instead of 3-bets?

Thanks. This mistake finding kind of goes natural. I found a decent amounts of small typo errors as well. Would you like me to post them as well? Or send them in a PM?

Thanks for your answer, Matt.

The warning at the front of the book (by Malmuth & Sklansky) touches on the dangers of using GTO religiously, and is much appreciated. I feel it could have been expanded upon a bit, though.

For instance, take the GTO 3/4/5-betting ranges. GTO is supposed to be unexploitable, but if you're always up against KK+ when you call a 5-bet shove, and your opponents don't 3bet light to begin with, then aren't you being exploited for having a light 4-betting range? Especially if you then call their shoves because GTO says you can't fold more than 50% of your 4-bets so as not to allow your opponent to profitably shove any two cards.

.

Can you really look at only the parts of the 3/4/5-tactics?
Sure, we´ll maybe be losing when you look at 5-bet all in preflop-pots, but be ahead even more in other spots, since Villain isn´t playing optimally (not 3betting enough, for instance).
That beeing said, even if we might be ahead using GTO, against this opponent it´s probably more +EV to be exploiting, given that we know exactly how he plays.

Some good clarification on GTO vs exploitative play in your posts.

One nitpick: In your example the vast majority of a GTO open-raising range is not -EV. We can call with any hand that has at least 50% equity against his range; since he shoves every hand, we can call the top 50% of all hands we are dealt.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Spladle's posts held the same idea. So basically what this means is that, yes, we could do better if we adjusted, but if we just stick to GTO we're still +EV overall. Furthermore, we don't risk being countered by an opponent who decides to start 3- and 5-betting light. If this is correct, then I think I'm starting to see the light.

GTO ranges do NOT adjust. Therefore, it doesn't matter if our hand has more than 50% equity (which isn't the correct equity needed for a call to be +EV anyways) because when we raise to 3.5x and the Villain shoves to 100bb, we are only going to call with a very small portion of our opening range. Our goal is to maximize our EV against a player who's also playing perfectly, so that there's no incentive for either player to make an adjustment. An easy way for us to check we aren't making a mistake to make sure that we're calling enough that the Villain can't 3-bet too wide. This will require us to actually call with very few hands.

GTO strategies aren't about adjusting our ranges to exploit other opponents, that is what exploitative strategies are.

Let me rewrite the paragraph on top of page 46, and I'll add it to the corrections. This page is causing more confusion than any other page probably largely due to this paragraph.

"This is an important frequency to keep in mind when playing against players who refuse to flat 3-bets out of position. These players need to defend 15.2 percent of their total opening range when facing a 3-bet then 5-bet, or else 3-betting then 5-betting all-in against these players with hands such as suited aces and pocket pairs will be profitable."

That's kind of like asking "If your opponent never bluffs the river and you sometimes call with a bluff catcher, aren't you being exploited?" The answer is no, as you're supposed to lose money sometimes on the river when you have a bluff catcher and he has a strong hand. Sure, you can exploit him more if you always fold your bluff catchers. But it's very rare you play an opponent like this, it's pretty easy to know what to do if your opponent is never bluffing and you don't beat a bluff, and in general I think people tend to try to oversimplify complex spots by saying "Well, villain never bluffs" when that isn't true. This applies to all stakes and games.

Same applies to the pre-flop example. If your opponent's don't 3-bet light and you play GTO, you will beat them. You could probably beat them by more if you folded more than a GTO should to his 3-bets, but you're still going to win if you make light 4-bets. So it would not be reasonable to say you're being exploited when you're playing the winning strategy.

If they are small typos that don't deserve their own post then I'd appreciate them in a PM after you have a couple (and maybe can give you something in exchange for doing this, like help you with hand histories etc if you're interested). If they're errors or if a section causes a lot of confusion (like the top of page 46 does) then posting it in the thread is probably best as then others can chime in as well.

You misunderstand. Of course we can choose to call all-in with any hand that has enough equity to do so profitably against the exploitable range our opponent is shoving. We can also choose not to raise in the first place with any hand not meeting that criteria. But doing so is not GTO. My original point stands, and so I'll repeat it.

Consider a HUNL game with 100bb stacks against someone who 3-bet jams all-in from the BB 100% of the time. Against this opponent, the vast majority of a GTO open-raising range will be -EV. That doesn't mean it's GTO to remove the weakest part of our open-raising range to stop our -EV play.

That also doesn't mean it's GTO to call all-in with any hand that has enough equity to do so profitably against someone shoving 100% of the time.

Cheers. I'm slowly getting there. It's only a matter of time before I'll be ready to sell the ranch and head for Vegas.

Thanks for the explanation. To be sure, that I do really understand it, I've made an example on my own. It would be really nice, if you can look over it and tell me if everthing is correct.

Let's assume we have a betting range of 30% nuts and 70% bluffs and we bet 65% (1,65:1 odds) of the pot on every street. That means, we have to bet 48,18% on the river, 77,38% on the turn and 100% flop ??

Thanks again for your help, Matt.

-Chris

If you bet 65% of the pot against me, by calling I'm risking 0.65 PSB to win 1.65 PSB. I think you're somehow confusing yourself with this, and it's causing you to get some stuff mixed up. Let me know if we're on the same page with this first (since you mentioned 1.65:1 odds) and then I or someone else can look into the other stuff.

If you are betting 65% pot on the river, villain needs to call 0.65/1.65=39.4% of the time to keep you indifferent to bluffing. And since you are laying odds of 1.65:0.65 villain needs to be good 0.65/2.3=28.3% of the time. So you should have 28.3% bluffs and 71.7% valuebets in your betting range.

p. 181 Shouldn't the title "The Mental Block of Betting as the Preflop Raiser" be "... as the Preflop Caller"?

Now let's assume 30% of our total range is pure nuts and 70% is pure air. This means we need 11.8% bluffs on the river. And we are betting 41.8% of our total range on the river.

From this it follows we are betting 58.4% on the turn including 28.4% bluffs of which 16.6% additional turn bluffs.

And we are betting 81.3% on the flop including 51.3% bluffs of which 22.9% additional flop bluffs.

Got it! Finally.

Thanks a lot B3lly, for taking time to explain it to me (thanks to Matt as well !). Tbh, I really was a bit confused and this book makes it clear, that I have to do a lot more work besides the tables.

This 1.65:1 odds thing was the crux. I definitely mixed up some stuff here.

-Chris

Forgive my thickness, but I'm having trouble understanding the second sentence of this paragraph on p. 432 (I've bolded the section that eludes me):

"Analysis: This turn card is tricky since it puts no additional strong hands in our range. However, it does allow us to continue to slowplay our flopped sets since they are now full houses and raising a few of these hands would make it more difficult for our opponent to bet only two streets for value. Therefore, I think calling and encouraging him to continue bluffing is superior."

Could anyone explain this to me?

@Matt: The last sentence of the first analysis paragraph on p. 433 seems to have successfully hidden from the editors (bolded):

"Analysis: I found this river interesting and non-intuitive. Our range has so many full houses that we’re actually able to raise our opponent’s river bet quite aggressively. Furthermore, two-thirds our calling range will be ovepairs, though chances, except for queens, they’ll all be bluff catchers as our opponent won’t be value betting a hand worse than queens."

My attempt to correct it: "Furthermore, two-thirds of our calling range will be overpairs, though chances are that, except for queens, they’ll all be bluff catchers as our opponent won’t be value betting a hand worse than jacks." (Note: I think it must be "worse than jacks", because otherwise QQ would be a bluff catcher too)

Hello,

Is this book for cash or tournament play?

I'm working through building a bankroll at the moment would this book be similar?

Any advice

The book is mainly aimed at cash, although it will still be applicable to early stage tournament play, and some smaller than cash spr situations post-flop later in a tourney.

It's nothing like Building a Bankroll. BaB is a fine book in its own right and has a lot of nuts & bolts for microstakes/smallstakes players. Applications is much more advanced.

While I think ANLH is the best NL book to come out in years, I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner. Try Dan Harrington and Ed Miller if you're looking for something more like BaB. Once you have those covered and start to wonder why some regulars always seem to have the edge on you, then it's time to buy this book.

Ok thanks i'll hold of,i'm hoping for a version to be released on kindle.

Mathew,

Not to derail your thread.

But what advice would you give for applying the ideas in AoNLH to PLO?