Call Stations and Tilt

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
1

These full ring games at 25/50 and 50/100 are insane! Everybody calls! It’s impossible to isolate pre with any consistency whatsoever. Today I saw someone open from the BT for 7x and get all six Villains still in the hand to call (4 of them check-call)! It’s absolutely !@#$% bonkers!

So I came up with an idea - never open. If you limp you will be 5-6-7-handed but if you open 6x you will still be 5-6-7-handed so why risk the extra chips? Just play tight and limp strong cards or strong position. If you hit, you play and if you don’t, just check-fold.

65o.
From the small blind. It limps all around and I call. 7-handed flop is T34 and I have the top end open-ended. I min bet and get ALL SIX CALLS! Turn is the deuce (magic). This is a check-raise and well … it just gets really stoopit. Must watch awesomeness.

AQo
This is 2 hands later and Villain opens massive. It smells like tilt from the big loss I just gave him so I call with a pretty prime hand. I hit top-pair-good kick. He jams about 1/3rd of my stack open-ended and I call. Cha-ching!

A5s
Literally 4 hands after that, same Villain opens for 9x. I call because with my stack now this is cheap and I have potential nuts, and hey I think he’s still tilted. Flop is all-spades for nut flush. I actually kinda feel bad now. It’s check-raise time again, first to act of 4. It checks to Villain and he jams. I tank a little bit just to figure out my sizing. I raise double and get the guy on my left to call all-in as well. Up and over 3-handed, I show 'em the bad news. Guy on my left actually wasn’t a bad call but when I see what original Villain had, yup he’s definitely tilted hard.

So yeah, limp strong cards or late position, play the hands you hit and check-fold the whiffs. It works! Too simple to believe. I sat down with 20k and 22 minutes later I left up 67k despite being totally card dead for the first 15 mins. Obviously I was extra lucky on a couple of those boards today but I’ve been doing this for a week now in ring games and steadily winning chips (not this big but yeah). It only works at these tables though, these 25/50 and 50/100 9-seaters. 6-max you can still play fairly normal poker.

2

I play these rooms all the time and make bank of STATIONS. In real life stations, put braces on my kid for real. You gotta raise up to literally 7 to 11 big blinds. It’s the only way. I’ve read multiple books on it and the only way to shake these guys off their middling pairs is to scare them have to death with a raise size that they can’t handle especially come the turn and the river. GTO recommends if you’re in position, you should be 4 times the BB plus one big blind for every limper. it works like a charm every time it’s my magic formula.

3

4x plus is my formula exactly. It’s great in tournaments but once I started dipping my toes into the rings it’s useless, especially at 9 seaters.

1 Like
4

napkin, you bad think here. you strong hand want that the pot is big, if you dont hit, its sad, but when u heat, you might won 2 or 3 stack of 100BB against them because of our very huge open

5

It’s how low to no consequence online poker plays. Always been like that.

6

Playing a tight GTO game is the only guaranteed way to avoid un exploitation. If you wanna mess around with other techniques, that’s on you, but your background should be GTO based if you want to win in the long run.

7

Well, here’s the reality of it all.

Playing against strong players, pros or near pros, yes GTO is the best way to go. However, even pros have leaks. If you spot a leak in someone’s game you step out of GTO in certain spots to exploit him. Why? because GTO always assumes a GTO opponent. GTO does not take into account player types or leaks. If you have a book on Villain as overfolding scary rivers, the solver is still going to tell you to flat or check back say, when in reality, you should be bluffing scary rivers more often against this Villain’s leak. Solver only sees one hand, and that one hand is the entire universe to it.

So the more that a pro GTO player spots leaks and weaknesses, the more often he is going to step out of GTO to exploit. If he does not, he is leaving money on the table.

Now let’s extrapolate this philosophy to play money and low stakes. There are going to be tables where EVERYONE is heavily leaky and exploitable. Nobody here knows the first thing about GTO, so no one is going to calculate pot odds of your turn bet and realize that he really should fold, etc. So, logically, playing straight GTO against them will not be very profitable. Solver will tell you bluff this spot 60% of the time when in reality you should be bluffing it 10% of the time because Villain loves to call. GTO does not take that into account.

If you try to play GTO in 7.5k, 2.5k MTTs and freerolls, at best you will be leaving heaps on money on the table and at worst you will be losing so badly that you will have to play an exceedingly long time for variance to eventually put you to the good. I’ve never really played above 50k buy-in here, so I can’t really say but I would think that one would have to play at 100k minimum to start playing a significant chunk of their game as straight GTO. That’s only a guess.

However, playing GTO at these low stakes is a complete waste of time, but KNOWING GTO at ANY stakes is always fantastic. It will make you a better exploiter by understanding exactly where all the baselines and math are, so that you can make the best exploits. But the only GTO baseline decisions that you will be making will be against players that you have no book on yet, and most of these players will not take long to get a book on. If Villain spends an entire orbit limp-calling, you know exactly how to exploit him. If Villain half-pot and full-pot bets 50% of flops, you know that he’s LaG and exactly how to exploit that, etc. In fact, you might even make more money by just assuming any new player that you face is a call station rather than GTOing him until you can book him.

8

Everyone knows to sway from GTO time to time you can never play perfect GTO, but your game should be bound and sealed by GTO.

9

Also, I got recruited to 5 leagues due to my play so I stick with my GTO fundamentals and sway when I need to of course. I have won many free rolls and MTT is easily using my methods which are my own range sheets, which I have tweaked to my own taste. The beginning of getting good is knowing your ranges and sticking to them. Once you’re good with that, then you could break out elsewhere. If you’re playing King for off suit in any position, you have problems. Unless of course, your head to head.

10

If you try to play GTO in 7.5k, 2.5k MTTs and freerolls, at best you will be leaving heaps on money on the table and at worst you will be losing so badly that you will have to play an exceedingly long time for variance to eventually put you to the good.

I responded to a similar claim on Reddit this week. This is not true.

Yes, if your opponents are very bad there will be many exploits available that provide a significantly higher EV than the GTO strategy. No, this does NOT mean that GTO suddenly becomes “losing.” If you execute anything close to an optimal GTO strategy consistently, you will be a winner at any stakes.

These discussions also tend to exaggerate the difference between GTO and exploitative play. There are certainly SOME spots where the optimal exploit and the GTO baseline are significantly divergent, but there are surely many more spots where both approaches will take roughly the same action. GTO may use 2.2x while Exploit uses 3.5x, but they’re both still opening AQo from UTG and T9s from CO. Neither of them is opening ATo from UTG. They’re both overbetting with top set in a 3-bet pot when the turn comes an A or K. Et cetera.

Many players act like GTO is broccoli and Exploitative is a slice of chocolate cake, when it’s more like GTO is Diet Coke and Exploitative is Dr. Pepper.

1 Like
11

When I first joined Replay I played as close to GTO as I knew how, and started winning all over the place. Then I realized how weak the fields were and started trying to exploit more. I won less frequently for MONTHS before my deviations finally became as good as my baseline strategy (which was still nowhere near proper GTO, by the way).

1 Like
12

The reality, truth about GTO, Exploitative poker is that BOTH Younguru, Napkin Holder, others are BOTH partially right, and partially wrong, both about GTO, Exploitative poker.

They are both semi similar in spots, between semi some to semi lots to semi most of time, and are significantly different in spots, between semi some to semi lots of times.

Younguru has cited some valid examples of when they are similar.

Here is a example where they very different.

I was at Northern Quest Casino, playing in the $10 to $100 buy in 150 player offline NL Hold Em Tournament. It was $10 to $100 buy in because you could buy in for as little as $10, which got you 1000 chip start stack, or you could buy in for $50 that got you 7500 chip start stack, or you could buy in for $100, which got you a 15,000 chip starting stack.

I short buyed for the 1000 chip starting stack. I doubled up twice to about 4500 chips early. Then I got moved to the ultimate nittiest table in poker tournament history. There was a stack going all in every 2,3,4 hands. I noticed that. I noticed nobody ever called. They either would only call if got JJ to AA, AK, AQ suited, etc, or they were ultimate extremely card dead.

Because of that, I also started shoving ATC every 2,3,4 hands. I did that for about 1 and 1/2 hours, at the table, and never got called, and built my 4500 stack to tournament chip leader doing that before I got moved to another table and stopped doing that. I went on to win that tournament for a $900 win.

What I did, was doing, was exploitative poker play. I was exploiting the ultimate extreme tightest tight but nits. That was way different then GTO, as GTO would never ever play like that. Not even close, not even semi similar, etc.

That was a example of where exploitative poker can be way the heck very different from GTO play.

But that’s just a example. There are examples where exploitative play and GTO play is very similar.

Like anything in poker, it really depends on the situation.

As for which is better, more profitable. They are about the same because with exploitative, your observations, info, reads, needs to be very accurate, and your exploitative play needs to be the right play to exploit, in order to profit.

A player playing, trying to play GTO, needs to play as mistake free, as close to pure GTO as possible in theory to win over the long term.

Exploitative can lead to bigger profit then GTO, assuming you exploit right, and assuming, if your opponents make big enough mistakes to exploit.

The better, best players, pros, will be good at both exploitative poker, and GTO poker, and will use both exploitative, GTO poker, and will know when to use both exploitative poker and GTO poker.

GTO poker is best when up against very good poker players that uses at least some GTO. And its best when have no info on players, and need a starting baseline approach.

Exploitative is best when know the players very well, and know how they play, and know how to exploit them, etc.

So exploitative and GTO poker can be both similar and different depending on the situation.

So there is value in both what Napkin Holder and others and Younguru both are saying about Exploitative and GTO poker play.

13

Same for me I’m just trying to get as close to GTO as I possibly can. I completely kicked it today and won in seven card hi/lo. I was pretty shocked. I beat the whole league so for me GTO is definitely the way to go and refreshing on it daily helps me out a lot. I work on it every single day basically.

1 Like
14

I don’t disagree, but…

  • GTO doesn’t really apply in multi-way pots. It’s very difficult to solve, and even if you could, a GTO strategy does not mean the same thing multi-way as it does heads up. Critically, it does not ensure that you won’t be losing if 2 or more other players aren’t playing perfect GTO, even if you could. Sure, you can apply GTO concepts from heads up to multiway, except…
  • GTO concepts don’t actually exist. When people are talking about GTO concepts or fundamentals, what they’re trying to do is extract human implementable rules from the solver output. It’s important to recognize that the solver doesn’t actually implement or follow any of these rules, and not all the abstractions are useful (IMHO). “Balance” is a good example, and one most exploitative proponents take issue with. The solver will never take a sub optimal action with one hand because it might benefit other hands in its’ range. It’s never trying to be balanced - balance is just a side effect of it optimizing against a GTO opponent.

You won’t find many preflop solutions for playing against 2+ limps, or what you’re supposed to do against a raise and limp either, because in GTO neither of these happen. Still if you know your GTO ranges, you can take a decent stab at what the solver would come up with.

1 Like
15

If ever I have a problem in my games I go plug my ranges back into my solver and go through my hands one by one. I tweak and go back and steal again. Hasn’t let me down once and I’ve only been on since August. I am in six different poker leagues and play professionally. Replay is where I practice my game and it has brought me quite an amount of success!

16

Also, I forgot to make the point that GTO is all about exploitative play. I don’t know where that got mixed up in this conversation. The whole point of GTO is to exploit your opponent, but to not become exploitable yourself. Sometimes this gets hard if you become too knitty with your hands and you can forget to exploit others and this can get taken as being a GTO nit.