...and as a non-crusher who would like to study on his own, where would i find this?

It is interesting to think about. Obviously there is definitely some luck in life whether or not you believe in determinism or free will. If you are born with a 80 IQ you probably have virtually zero chance to be extremely successful from a financial standpoint or an elite poker player.

Then on the other hand there are many intelligent people who aren't very motivated to accomplish anything in life. Now is this their fault or was it inevitable that they ended up this way? I know smart people who are too lazy to put themselves into positions to even give them a chance to succeed so whether or not they are lucky is mostly irrelevant.

I been doing a lot of reading and watching regarding the universe. The truth of the matter is there is no meaning in life it just exist. Everyone of us can die tomorrow and it wouldn't effect a thing in the universe. Now the tough part accepting that and finding meaning to still live.

I don't think the survivor biases can be said about me because 04-07 I was still a fish constantly losing money and barely getting by with rakeback. I didn't quit because I was addicted to gambling in general. I only quit 07-09 because I didn't have any money to grind with and end up getting a job at the movie theater. Early 09-11 while all the big timer was crushing for millions I just begin to actually grab some books and surfing this forum for help. During that time I only won because everyone else didn't know how to value bet. Then Black friday happen and I end up leaving everything behind to move to Vietnam. It was only suppose to be a 3 month grind thing to get my SNE back and money. I only end up staying because I was broke after 3 months and end up grinding .25/.5 mass tabling being happen earning 12 dollar an hour. Finally got phil newell first book and climb up the rank of actually knowing about "hidden information" strategy. 2012-2015 while all the euro guys learned how to play exploitative on pokerstars I was just clicking button and doing weird sh.it busting a bunch of time and playing 1/2-30/60. The fact of the matter was everyone was kept there secret sauce and it was impossible to learn poker the correct way. 2016 was beginning of my break out thanks to solvers. So yeah I guess you can say I was lucky enough to keep being so stubborn and not quitting when I had a gambling problem and hoping that as new technology get better it cheaper and affordable

In related concept pure GTO strategy is like quantum mechanics of mix strategy where it just randomize ex. A hand play differently depending on randomize. Be like an electron atom you can never say for certain where it is only probability

DonJuan, very happy for your success. Wondering if you feel it was worth it spending the last 15 tears grinding poker to get to this point or if you would have done something else?

Also wondering what your take is on the fractures online climate and possibilty of getting superused. Do you play live anywhere?

never really thought about the cost of it I just happen to ride the wave of chance. I am turning 30 this month so I feel like I have a good 2-3 good years at the peak as long as bot infest or player assistant doesn't take over. I call out a former highstake 10 top rank head up nl about his assistant program in one of the solver chat. His excuse was everyone else is doing it. Seem to me like a lot of players are turning to the dark side and making up excuse on why there nothing wrong with having programs help them play gto in a lot of spot in real time. I guess when there money involve there always incentive for cheater.

LHE should be safe for now only because the edge/market is smaller compare to other format so it make no sense for them to put in the same amount of work. But every year there seem to be cheaper/cost program to scale for mass market. FYI right now it too expense for me to try to solve for 6+ max would need to spend like 5k+ monthly and at least a couple of months just to get something reasonable but maybe only a few years later to making it happen. In phil newell book first book there were talk about it taking years for google super computer to solve head up and it only took like 6 year later for cepherus to solve it. So things are moving very fast.

Do you think its possible for it to become a standard to ban players for using solvers while they play online or live?

Online I suspect will be attempted to be regulated but doubtful players computer savvy wont be able to get past whatever monitoring sites will have for detecting solver.

OT: DonJuan thank you for your life story on poker. Truly appreciate your well angled charts as well

from what other are saying it impossible to get detect since they can just run it on a remote desktop/server. There are guys testing out bots on ACR/other site not because stars can detect it but the skill level/rake on stars isn't profitable yet for them. That not going to last forever as they using solver to slower solve. Btw most 3way situation isn't possible to solve for GTO yet and even the spot that are reasonable are only good for flop. There a big gap between close to GTO and the best lhe player though since from my studying there no relationship between using what I learn from head up to play 3 max+ ex. sb open in huhu. sb vs bb in 3max almost every flop mix strategy are different. You just have to slowly build up different mental map structure with each different sim.

+1. Thanks for the phenomenal post OnTheRail15. Would love to one day watch you vs DonJuan or Ninawilliams HUHU in LHE donkament per your preference to crush in tough games.

In my biased opinion, fact that we can play poker live or online makes us all a lockbox.

Being born in Japan moving to USA at 7, I'm still mega thankful for the luck I had of not being stuck in Japan and not having freedom of USA. Japan is a great place to travel to but one of worst places to live in sans the food.

I'm having trouble knowing what I should be defending out of the BB with. Say I face an early position raise that gets 2 callers (so 3 players going to the flop for 2 small bets). Do I complete in the BB with hands like J3 suited, T8 off, T5 suited ect?

any two suited for sure

I hope you might like this recent paper that I've written on Cepheus:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...018.00210/full

Phil

DonJuan: I admire your story as well. My one concern with your way of learning is such a reliance on solvers pushes you further and further down the “one trick pony” path. You aren’t becoming a better “poker” player you are becoming a better limit Holdem bot. This makes you great at your game, certainly even though I am a good Lhe player I am sure you would be favored both heads up and multiway. But what if 8super decides he likes a stud game, or Omaha?

Offsuit ones are tricky but I personally defend T8o vs EP raise and 2 callers.

J3 suited and T5 suited as well.

Generally have a base line defense range then adjust tighter or looser based on EP raise and cold callers.

Or more likely, sites stop offering LHE due to it being overridden by bots and closed to solved even multiway.

I disagree. I think limit hold'em has applications to stud, hi lo, and other fixed limit gamea. I havent played to much with solvers but my take is this approach works well for 'common' situations to find a balanced strategy.

That said, I also agree games change in popularity and you have to follow where the money is. If LHE is your only game, and bigger or comparable games run in other forms, you will be at handicapped.

Nice victory lap. Are you going to post the graph when you get crushed?

That isn’t my point though. Learning to use a solver to play nearly perfectly in a specific situation does not translate well to learning other games. I do agree that being strong at game theory / Poker theory does translate well. I’m a “gto” guy and I love what solvers can do for us, I’m just saying don’t get pigeonholed into viewing all problems as “I’ll memorize what the solver would do here”

I don't want to start mocking the charts or the graphs bc I am fascinated by the posts and I learn from the insights and anecdotes.

But the point of professional gambling is to make the most money at the expense of others. Pretty much any of the best players in other formats are making many times what a top LHE player would make. So unless it's primarily a project of passion (which is completely valid), choosing to be pro LHE player would seem to have by far the lowest earnings ceiling, compared to other formats. Why would a rational professional gambler with the ability to work so hard and such an aptitude for learning, choose that route?

The top MTT, PLO, NLHE cash, and mix players make many times that of the top LHE players. I think it's easy to get comfortable w strengths and easy to be loathe to work on weaknesses - even to their own detriment. I know I'm certainly guilty of that at times.

I think in general life is long enough so that some semblance of EV shows through the noise for most people. It's neither like playing high card 4rollz nor is it like grinding 1,000,000 hands and comparing bankrolls.

Maybe like playing 500 hours live or something, it's really rare to overcome a tsunami of negative or positive expectation with rungood or runbad (respectively). But there are an awful lot of people who think they are +2 BB/hr winners when they are only +1, or people who think they are +0.5 BB/hr winners when they are actually -0.5 BB/hr losers.

Ah there probably some confusion I am actually going to be one of the best player adapt at the changing environment. People seem to be confuse by how poker really works for example alpha-1 defense doesn't work in a game like poker and that has already been explain by one of the solver creator. So old school thinking are with pot odd are quiet bad in poker. Also another thing I found out in real GTO there no such thing as bluffing your worst calling hand on riv that just another human sub optimal play which could be exploitative but that not gto. So with all this bad human thinking why would I trust in my own thinking and not reply on these machine to solve for me and I can always change the variable ex. rake/ or artificial bet size to see how it effect calling/folding most of the time this happen by accident but it help me discover new things.

One of the curse before was not switching games fast enough become one of the greatest gift for me. The Nl/Plo and poker climate has change so fast that top player 1-2 years ago are consider fish by the new comer look at what LLinusLLove/ Limitless vs OtB_RedBaron. This guys all are customize there solver. Stud etc is are pretty big game but all can be program to solve like plo/nl and has already been ask to solve the reason why it not being done? Well not market not big enough yet. What I am actually to get at is why not wait for when program get better at teaching us to get better and learn it cheaper while other are stuck in there old dog can't learn new trick problem when most of the exploitative play are sub optimal and solver actually has a Max exploitative strategy numbers but you are out of your mind if you think you can play that well before you even understand full gto first ?

I am not really worry about not being able to learn new format either because the way I study are base on this book. https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-...ords=peak+book . Key words how you build up your mental representation and also deliberate practice.

And I customize the way I study that once I am done with head up/ 3 max lhe I am going to go straight to nl or plo. I want to add another thing overall there is no direct heuristics between huhu and bvb but that only because opening range are different and position. So you are force to "memorize" different structure. There are a bunch of heuristics that is similar with plo/nl/lhe though since flush/straight+combos blockers work the same.

Thanks for this as well as the Amazon book on how you learn new variants of poker mentally.

May not be comparable but Ninawilliams crushed at LHE and transitioned to HU NL pretty quickly and won at rate stronger or as strong as 10/20+ LHE HUHU if I recall.

In short, I think you will have great chance at crushing NL if you decide to learn that. No idea for PLO but imagine your work ethic outside table alone will get you to crusher level for PLO as well.

Also I probably going to get more hate but the reason why I feel live poker is probably one of the worst way a poker player to spend there time is there is going to be a decline in your skill level when you are playing at a speed of 35 hands an hour. You rarely get to see show down hold card. You are winning by default because fun players are bad and there is no innovation in thinking since other winning player don't want to test out new strategy fear of being look funny. And even if you test out new things how you going to keep the sample size/evidence. Of course people are going to say well everything look like this the past x years or whatever. But wait didn't we hear the same thing about live poker before 03 or before 08/black friday think back on how sudden change all with new blood coming in. Trust me I am not in a comfy chair thinking I will always be good by default. https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Li...ords=ray+dalio Is a really good book on this how to become better and improving your thinking/learning. But one of the key I learn is people are always going steady up until they reach a point where they start to decline. Now the key is are you going to learn fro it and make a loop and keep going up or keep moving down. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/207587864058775268/

Also I am not going to answer questions on where I find the solver because that wouldn't be right...for the people that know how to use the search function and also I am not going to give out a bunch of free answer on what to do with X since unlike someone(a video coach before) that pm regarding keeping my mouth shut on this solver program I haven't gotten pay yet. I haven't capitalize yet on success please wait for me to begin coaching first and pay me for it.

Just wanted to comment on the bolded. I think you meant to bluff with the strongest folding hand.

Mathematics of poker specifically says it doesn't matter which part of your folding range you bluff. The reason to pick that range is because IRL, maybe it worse angles themselves into a call. In a GTO world, it doesn't matter since worse will never call, so you should focus solely on blockers.