I was kind of bored waiting for game and played some online BJ. Was interested in expect valued of being dealt 88 against dealer T.
https://wizardofodds.com/games/black...dix/9/8dh17r4/

Poker is very similar to BJ. BB you are being force -.5/BB auto.

Question why do we still split 88 against T even though we are -ev? Once you figure this out you will understand why capping in BB is alright with hands that you think is bad.

but they also assume perfect play from the other players, so i wouldn't expect this to increase the opening frequency by design.

seems like whether you check the flop would be highly sensitive to changes in preflop ranges. this is probably why you guys arrived at different solutions.

If our opponents do not play perfectly that means we can open marginally more hands compared to GTO based ranges. If we play perfectly (big assumption) and our opponents do not that would argue that we can play even wider than GTO preflop.

It's probably fair to say that no one played close to perfect post flop back in 2004 so somewhat tighter ranges were appropriate for all players. One example would be always continuation betting the flop in wide ranges spots. If everyone does that then everyone is making the same mistake and everyone will show an empirical loss with that hand. It would take a modern GTO play (balanced flop check back) to make this particular hand profitable by any player.

Clearly the 50% equity threshold is just when there is only one other guy. And I'm just simply relaying the advice he gave and that the resteal ranges unlike the initial opens are not based on hard data. No opinion was given.

But I will say I do not like his resteal ranges, more so with the mix

DJ the master speaks .

This isn't correct and the line of thinking can certainly cost you handily.

You want to look at your "optimal" ranges as a blend of strategies that do well vs various counter strategies. When your opponents make mistakes you then play the part of your ranges that benefit most from their mistakes and possibly get to add in a few more hands that benefit enough to profitably enter the pot but also want to dump the hands that do poorly vs the mistakes they're making.

Right, it's all about your relative skill against your opponents. I see in the book the data was based upon a .73 BB/100 player. No idea how that translates to live $200/$400, can definitely believe the skill edge is greater. But we must always be careful, while we may be better our opponents probably have done so as well and the worst of the bunch would have waved the white flag a long time ago.

lol your iron friend, tell him hello!

Interesting. Could you provide a concrete example of what you are pointing out? I'd like to explore this thinking further. My results from this weekend would corroborate your point .

J Lot

The main point is that not all mistakes are capitalized on by playing more hands.

If the player to your left is cold calling too much you need to open a more value heavy range than when he folds too much. More generally, if your opponents are playing too loose aggro you should play tighter than optimal.

Here's an extreme concrete example.

If you're playing a toy game like, say, 20bb no limit holdem where btn can min open, open shove or fold and bb can shove or fold there will be optimal ranges for this. If you bb adversary simply shoves 100% over a min open your btn strat should be WILDLY different than your optimal ranges. Optimal open is 83% in this game. Countering the 100% shove villain opens 53%.

it depends on what their errors were. in general post flop errors are likely to be to the benefit of marginal opens, but if players were too tight out of the blinds in 2004 then the profitable open range for his data may be too loose by gto standards (and vice versa). same would apply for peoples inclination to get to showdown.

50% wouldn't ever be the threshold though. ie: when in the bb against a button open you'd actually need more than 50% equity to 3bet because you're now opening the action to allow him to 4bet when he's higher up in his range. the decision to 3bet out of the sb has other considerations as well and in no circumstances should your decision be hinged on whether you have >50% equity against someones range.

i think we can all agree that the 40/20/10 is a highly inaccurate simplification.

I want to make sure we don't conflate preflop and post flop arguments here. My original point was that if our opponent's play poorly post flop we can play more hands preflop, all else being equal. If our opponent's mistake is that they play poorly preflop as described then I would agree with you. We still do not lose by playing a GTO preflop range, but we gain more by adapting to or exploiting our opponent's particular range.

I always think if it as the tight NIT who raises. A GTO range for his position might be 25% or whatever but he only opens 10%. Because we know that we should assume an UTG 9 max type of range for him and adjust accordingly by playing less hands. In this example though, if we play better than he does post flop, I'd argue we can expand upon our assumed UTG 9max GTO range to exploit his post flop mistakes.

Would you agree that if we did not know that he opens too tightly and assumed he played a 25% GTO range, we still would not lose by playing our GTO unexploitable range? I agree we do not gain as much as we do by playing tighter against him and exploiting his nitty tendencies, but I don't think it's accurate to say that playing this way would cost us handily.

I agree. I think we have to be clear about the type of mistakes, whether they be preflop mistakes or post flop mistakes. If the guy only ever opens AA clearly we should tighten up.

it isn't necessarily to conflate pre and post. if it was the case that people were too aggressive or went to showdown too often in 2004, it may have made hands at the bottom of the gto range unprofitable while still benefiting him overall.

it was a mistake on my part to use preflop looseness to illustrate.

Got ya, so we agree our GTO range is still unbeatable as a whole, but if we lop off the bottom piece of that because the guy is a showdown monkey we gain compared to a standard GTO range via the exploitation. I think we're on the same page.

One risk of course is that our opponent suddenly realizes that we're opening a bit tighter against him and he adapts by showing down less than is optimal. Now we are the one being exploited! Granted I doubt there are many who are that sophisticated.

Oh the 50% threshold only applies in the book when you there is also at least one other player left to act so it does not say you should reraise from the big blind. But otherwise agree with what you are saying

My posts are mostly about the opening 40 though

it could work in both ways.

if the field stox pulled data from was too tight, passive or folded too much on later streets he would show a profit on opens that might not in a gto environment.

this is in response to your post where you said,

"If our opponents do not play perfectly that means we can open marginally more hands compared to GTO based ranges. If we play perfectly (big assumption) and our opponents do not that would argue that we can play even wider than GTO preflop."

which is not always true.

if your opponent is making really brutal mistakes then sure, you can open 100% on the button, but generally the mistakes are quite small and have a differential impact on the top vs the bottom of your range.

The point is that if you’re not implementing GTO strategy, you can still be profitable. However, the data that you generate can’t be evaluated for the profitability of a GTO strategy, which may increase the profitability of certain parts of your range. Especially if you use the auto c-bet strategy or don’t adjust well to that strategy.

I guess I'm not following you here Abba. If the field is too tight, passive or folded too much post flop we agree that the exploit is to play marginally more hands pre. If the opposite is true and our opponent is playing too loosely post flop isn't it also better to play marginally more hands pre to exploit this mistake? I think a further deviation in post flop play from GTO can exploit this even more, say bluffing more against overly tight players and bluffing less against overly loose players, but in both scenarios we can expand our pre flop tree to maximize this.

What I’m saying is that if played GTO button opens back in 2004 high stakes online you would have lost money (unless you are more skilled) with the bottom of your range. Think you know what I’m saying just confirming.

Are you saying that you will make more money with your better hands because you having overall losing hands such as K8o in your range? I can get behind something like however it will probably also reduce the profitability of say the weaker 35-40% portion of hands in your range.

No, I think that using a balanced strategy over the entire game tree, not just preflop, will lead to a higher profitability of all hands on all runouts. Which is something I know I need to work on in order to improve my overall strategy.

I’m not sure what we can say about optimal button hand ranges in 2004 poker, in terms of exploitation. However gto should be indifferent to opponent adjustments in theory, which means the best that they could do is break even when two true gto opponents play each other. Whatever adjustments they do implement in terms of trying to exploit you will lead to opening themselves up to be exploited.

When looking at the data, the pros were not profitable with certain hands, but just because they are pros does not mean they were using the best strategy, which could hurt the profitability of those hands you call marginal.

You're right that if the field over folds most/any streets then you can play looser pre and capitalize.

If players are too loose aggro on most/any street you should probably tighten up somewhere.

For example, if a player cbets the turn too much you should definitely fold with your more marginal flop peels (yes, i know maybe you can peel range on flop as an exploit and make up for most of the the loose peel but it's not optimal, it's at best minimally exploitative and would require you to totally (like never x/r) restructure your flop ranges to make up for what you lose by not just folding more otf). Similarly if a player cbets the flop too much you can exploit this by playing a bit tighter than solver ranges pre.

Exploiting a later street leak can definitely start on an earlier street.

Like I said before, you should think of your solver produced strategies as a blend of counter strategies vs a variety of opponent strategies. You can eliminate some of that blend from the mix if it's not what's exploiting their leaks and should def remove it if it's exploited by their leaks.

Multiway "GTO" poker is not unexploitable.

edit: more precisely, multiway solver produced strategy is not indifferent to opponent adjustments.

True, good point. I’m simply talking about the problem of saying that because some particular winning pros were not able to profit off certain hands that it means that you can’t implement a strategy where it could be profitable or improve the profitability of your entire range.

It seems to me that your statement can be interpreted in two ways.

1. That an optimal strategy can contain 'loss leaders'

or

2. Just because some old fogies couldn't play that 'ish profitably doesn't mean we can't


1 is very unlikely to be true

2 is def true but doesn't really make a point. profitability is fluid depending on opposition strategies so perhaps game conditions (i.e. opp strats) were such that some hands couldn't be profitably played back then. Or they just sucked and should have been able to play those hand profitably in those game conditions and just weren't sophisticated enough to do so. Who knows what's what in whatever game you might be playing at the moment.

I’m not saying that their strategy was bad, just that it could have been improved, and those improvements could have allowed them to play more hands profitably.