GTO Poker Simplified: Strategy lessons from the solvers that any cash game or tournament player can apply to their game (The Poker Solved Series)

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Despite the ubiquity of straddles in live poker, they remain understudied from a GTO perspective. Consequently, we fired up our server and determined ranges for both UTG and button straddles. Other assumptions such as opening and subsequent raise sizing followed that described above for our live ranges. Studying the game of poker through GTO solvers is the necessary thing to do if you want to become a more serious player. They will improve your level of thinking and increase your profits over time. Final Thoughts Again, this chart only represents the hands you should open-raise with if the action has been folded to you. Some other charts also show what to do when facing a raise, which hands to 3-bet, which to call, and other situations.

Programs used to help you learn and understand poker GTO strategy are called solvers. They cover various situations and can assist you in making the right play in every possible scenario. Be warned that some players do use GTO as a crutch from a mental game perspective. There are times when it is blindingly obvious that an exploit is the way to go (let’s say the player in front of you is drunk and calling everything) but you refuse to diverge because of the uncertainty that playing an exploitative strategy brings. Also, GTO is only as good as the initial assumptions you make. You have to get the opponent’s range and betting tendencies right for the information to be useful. If you don’t revisit and question your own assumptions a few times you could be making big errors and protecting yourself from having to deal with them. Dara O'Kearney is a professional poker player, sponsored Unibet Pro and the co-host of The Chip Race Podcast. He is highly regarded as one of the best tournament grinders and poker coaches in the world, with a particular focus on modern solver technology. He is the co-author of Poker Satellite Strategy, PKO Poker Strategy and Endgame Poker Strategy. You might wonder what happens when two or more players use GTO at the same table. Well, in that case, no one has the advantage, and there are equal chances for each GTO player to end as a winner.In the first chapter the authors debunk several myths about GTO: is it the most profitable way to play? Is it only useful at higher stakes? Is it boring? Do you have to be a genius to use it? All is answered. Is there more than 1 GTO strategy?" Maybe someone else knows the answer but I don't actually know if we can prove it one way or the other in theory. In practice, the answer is yes- you can set a solver to play a flop betsizing of 75% or 33% in many spots and the EV of either one will often be very close to the same, so you are free to study and implement whichever one fits your playstyle more (although it would be good to know both since your opponents may lead you down the other game tree).

The advantage of this strategy is that not a lot of players know how to use it. Therefore, players who implement GTO in their game will allow their opponents to make frequent errors, which will result in more profit over time. GTO Solvers are taking a line that prevents them from being exploited by someone else who is applying a perfect GTO strategy, the net result being zero for both players if they are taking the best GTO lines. GTO Solvers are NOT taking the highest EV line with their range of hands, they are taking the highest EV lines with an entire range of hands taking into consideration the fact that: For those of you who prefer to play poker at 8- or 9-handed tables, as is the norm live, we have you covered as well. Indeed, the largest solve we have yet run was based on typical low-stakes, live games. We recently added to the app the results from that massive run, but for most of you the most useful ranges will be the exploitative full-ring ranges. This chart works based on the pot odds of your opponent. While betting half the pot, the pot odds of your opponent are 3 to 1, meaning that they will win the pot 25% of the time when calling. The software is also used for off-table studies, giving poker pros a chance to learn something new and adapt their existing strategies. The two most popular solvers today are called PioSolver and PokerSnowie.

OK, but what is GTO?" In poker we basically always use GTO to mean Nash Equilibrium. The equilibrium here basically is that all players are playing perfect strategy, and anyone who deviates from playing perfectly loses. The "perfect strategy" exists in pretty much every game and poker is no exception. The polarized range is always betting and sizes his bets to target column B for his optimal bluffing frequency to make the bluff-catching range indifferent to calling or folding. The most important chapter of the book is chapter 3 and the authors believe that the most important sentence is: “your value bets drive your actions”. They state that: “Your value bets are what you use to make money in poker and everything else you do should be in service of that. At every point in the hand you want to ask yourself what your strong value hands are in your range and how many of them you have? After that, what is the best strategy for your entire range that will allow your biggest hands to get paid off for the maximum in the long run?”

However, if you include bluffs in 25% of your combinations, your opponent’s calls and folds make no difference whatsoever.This is the core of the benefits and costs of an exploitative strategy. You stand to win much more when your assumptions are correct, but you open yourself up to exploitation. If your opponent adjusts, you lose. If your assumptions are incorrect you lose by exploiting yourself. If, however, you only play a GTO style you can only profit when your opponent leaves themselves open to exploitation. If you both play GTO you will end up playing to a stalemate, but if either of you divert from a GTO strategy you will leave yourself open to exploitation. Our 8-max live GTO computer runs are the most extensive and complex live solutions ever published. Indeed, as far as we know, they are the most sophisticated live ranges ever produced. They are available on our GTO Ranges app in the “Live rGTO” ranges section. The introduction of the following video explains the motivations for undertaking this gargantuan project, along with a description of how you can benefit from the results.