Yep.

GTO is a wonderful tool to teach equilibrium strategies. Every serious player should understand it. It is very powerful tool and if a player understands WHY a particular play is made by GTO it helps them become a better poker player.

However if you are playing in a game where you are not considering exploitative strategies that deviate from basic GTO at least 50% of the time when you have real decisions them you suck at game selection.

Poker is and will always be an exploitative game. If a player is not thinking in exploitative terms, they are either at the wrong table or they are playing wrong.

this part is a little shortsighted, you can be playing at 6max table with 4 excellent players and 1 mega whale and you will want to play the least exploitatively possible against the 4 excellent player, this is the main reason people learn GTO, it's when you play pots reg vs reg, sure you might find some leaks here and there but they are usually much less apparent and might become moreso when you actually have a good idea of what equilibrium looks like

I agree and disagree with this. I understand what you are saying, but even in this case your actions should be exploitatively isolating the mega-whale where possible. Also, it is my experience if 5 very good players are trying to take advantage of a whale while playing GTO against each other, it quickly devolves into an unspoken agreement where they just soft play each other. Why play GTO, which gives no actual advantage against another GTO player while drastically increasing variance rather than just soft play and reduce variance against the other good players? Basically play revolves less around GTO and more around each player trying to exploitatively isolate the whale while minimizing variance against everyone else.

Basically poker is played until the whale folds and then it is unspoken softplay afterwards.

It is a grey area and I am sure you can come up with examples of where GTO is the smart play, and I could come up with counter-examples where exploitation or unspoken softplay is the smart play.

The whole purpose of this exercise is the 5 players trying to exploit the whale.

If the collection of strategies is such that no player gains an advantage by deviating, then the game is playing at Nash equilibrium.

The "soft play" state by the five good players is an equilibrium state. There is no incentive to deviate. They are playing GTO.

Not sure why the regs would soft play each other after the whale folded. Regs arent incentivized to softplay in a 4 handed reg war why would it be any different if the whale folded utg or something? Theres no extra downside to getting stacked reg v reg, you just reload.

Also, even the biggest whales notice when they are being picked on. If the regs go to battle with the whale at every opportunity but soft play each other otherwise, then the whale is more likely to leave before getting stacked.

If you are in a tournament and there is a big whale at your table and a bunch of other regs, then that may change things. There actually is a downside to getting stacked... you dont get to play with the whale anymore, and even if the whale notices whats going on he cant just pick up and leave or get a table change.

I think the understanding is the regs are of somewhat equal skill. So, if 5 equally skilled reg players and a whale are playing against each other, by definition when the regs play against each other postflop they are not increasing their win rate, they are just increasing their variance.

Getting stacked reg vs reg has huge downside when variance is considered. Reducing variance with no drop in win rate is huge for a reg.

When it is 5 regs and a whale, it is natural for the regs to start to softplay each other. It reduces variance. Why wouldn't they want to reduce variance?

Note, softplay doesn't have to be extreme. It doesn't mean always checking it down if the whale isn't involved. Also, it us unspoken. If some regs do not participate then the others are savy enough to pick up on that and play back. It just means less bluffing, smaller bets,etc. Why play hard in situations that by definition you are EV neutral and are just increasing rake and variance?

Fundamentally the game hasn't changed in all eternity. The mark(whale is ID'd) stacked or gets a heater either way all the big $ is made there and very little should be made from those of equal skill.

GTO has solved HUs AFAIK but not 6 Max. At this point in history at least when it does then we stop playing on-line poker right?

You can quit if you want but no matter how good the bots get we humans will always be flawed and have leaks to exploit