In this specific example, by "expert player" I meant GTO wizard + exploitive champion, while "GTO wizard" was someone who just grinds out the GTO strategy while grinding reddit on his phone between hands and doesn't even realize there's a new fish at the table.

In general when people say "expert player" vs. "GTO player" in a theoretical conversation we can assume the GTO player isn't one that's adjusting. And it's not wrong to do that. GTO play and exploitive play can still be separated even though we all know that a good player combines aspects of both.

We are in the same school of thought then

The reality is we study GTO poker because it's the only way to look at the game where actions are provably correct and it's still somewhat approachable as a solution we can learn and incorporate into our strategy. It's orders of magnitude easier to learn as much of the GTO solution as we can and make appropriate logical adjustments from there than it is to make assumptions about all the possible opponents we could have and run a GTO machine separately under each of those constraints to find the optimal exploitive strategies. (And I know avoid does exactly that to a degree but he's either some kind of non-human savant who is incapable of getting bored while repetitively studying GTO bot outputs for thousands of hours or he exaggerates the depth of his studying/knowledge).

Lmao! I have high functioning Aspergers. It's highly documented as providing an uncanny ability to hyperfocus for unending periods on obsessions. (#disabilityWithBenefits)

If you're intersted: Here's a quote from a link about it https://spectrumeye.wordpress.com/20...and-obsession/

Benefits me w\ strategy games and has costs in other areas of my life. Overall... I'm neutral on it's affects in my life being good or bad. The goods are extreme (mad GTO skillz), the bads can be extreme as well. I'll frequently lose an entire month of my life perusing an obsession - GTO took thousands and thousands of hours to wrap my head around.

The obsessions are compulsive (I don't choose them) and they feels like a HUGE need to scratch an itch... gto poker was a multi-year massive ass itch for me.

This is all interesting but say you pull off a big bluff. Is it GTO to show or muck, and is this a poker question?

show bluffs to people who call too much. showing bluffs to nits is awful. encourage mistakes they already make

Yes but is it gto?

I mean it is a game, a game within a game, and "if you have all the variables" then I am sure you can crank out the numbers, but this is a big "if". There are many games within games, etc.

I mean, the other view is that my question is outside of poker and these games are outside of poker as you are using the term, but then there are all kinds of questions outside of poker that alter profit considerations.

In fact, we can begin to make a meaningful distinction between EV and profit at this point, because we're not playing in the real world. We're merely playing with mathematics. Which, you know, is a radical and appreciable perspective. I'm just saying, you can use language how you want, but it has philosophical implications. Obviously I've spent my time differently than 'avoid'.

btw, it's not exactly avoiding the nine-to-five after putting in thousands of hours of work. I mean, I am planning on putting thousands of hours of work in on something, including simulation technology, but I am not putting all my eggs in one basket. It's certainly worth putting in the extra work to lay a foundation if you plan on playing for like 20+ years continuously. I am not convinced though that this foundation is entirely even poker or EV the way we are choosing to use words in this thread.

The way I prefer to use language, there are poker musicians, and poker mathematicians. Undoubtedly the mathematicians have more EV, but I suspect the musicians such as Phil Ivey gain more profit with loads of experience and intuitively knowing the next note. As a comparison, chess, there are technicians and musicians. World champion is far more on the musician side (Magnus Carlson) who out-performed the technician (Anand), though admittedly this trend may be in the technician's favor in the long-term as chess becomes solved. Poker being solved in the same way, I am not so convinced.

"As a comparison, chess, there are technicians and musicians. World champion is far more on the musician side (Magnus Carlson) who out-performed the technician (Anand),"


No. Computers have removed the art, or as you call it "musicians" from the top levels of chess IMO.

How familiar are you with chess? I play at the club level from time to time, class B. Also, I recommend the documentary on Magnus Carlson called Magnus which is on Netflix if you have Netflix. I do think that they will remove the art, but disagree on Magnus though open minded of course.

Also, by analogy, Magnus cannot beat a computer, and Nakamura takes pawn odds in exhibition now, but who's won more $$$ and who's won more ELO points?

I play a lot of chess but am not particularly good . That said, I follow the game (and Magnus) fairly closely. Have seen doc, which I enjoyed, and guess we just agree to disagree.

the young top guys now (Carlsen, karjakin, etc) have all come up in the computer age and a huge part of their prep is studying the computer lines, which leads to so many draws because they can play their first 15-20 moves perfectly.

If you want the art/creativity back in human vs human chess, Fischer random (or some variation of it) FTW IMO.

Avoid: I thought you were getting back into playing poker. In which case, why talk about GTO/bot stuff. That's for when you're 100% retired and don't mind getting others up to speed.

Everyone already knows about GTO/bot stuff. It just comes down to who actually puts in the most work and is capable of execution.

This discussion feels too much like politics. Creates a huge amount of posts in a short amount of time, each person thinks they are right and unable to listen to the other side, and the arguments go in circles.

Trump doesn't believe in gto either.

+1. Don't know why it's not more popular.

I plan come back to this hand at some point, and start a new thread w/ more analysis.

I actually agree, but am not concerned with people being able to catch up at this point. To add to that, after 6-12mo's i'll be playing primarily NL at least 50-70% of the time. This might be my last year to smash the felt for LHE After that it's 5/10, 10/20 NLHE and hawking for sick 40, 60, and 100 LHE spots.

Either way, you're right about not posting stuffs... maybe I'll enact it immediately =P Especially when you have to deal with rude people like that new forum troll "leavesforwhatever" that runs rampant and spams everything constantly. #notWorthIt

gl on the felt dude, if you go to vegas for WSOP lets meet up.

^this. It's still insanely difficult

I thought bots would almost entirely kill online poker by now, especially collision bots.

Wow. Look at that wall of people who couldn't respond because they were so shocked you were wrong

It isn't exactly thriving and there have been numerous scandles. I wouldn't say I was entirely off.

Of course you wouldnt