Everyone knows what GTO players are, thankfully on Replay we don’t need to worry about them (too much).
It certainly shows though where Poker is going.
According to google, GTO are players who aims to play in a way that is unexploitable, meaning their strategy is difficult for opponents to take advantage of, regardless of their tendencies. This approach, based on game theory optimal (GTO) principles, seeks to find the best strategy that maximizes long-term winnings by balancing their hand ranges and betting frequencies. Essentially, a GTO player strives to play in a way that leaves their opponents with no profitable exploitative adjustments.
In practice these players play like robots, or a computer program.
So recently, there was a forum discussion about this and the most startling opinion was:
“If you compare the big and bold personalities of yesteryear to people who study and get good at the game today, the personalities comparatively have not as much to think about (they are much worse at the game, they are not able to and don’t need to process as much info).
In live poker especially there is (mostly) too much information to process within a reasonable amount of time to make the best possible decision.
If you ask Negreanu (probably the best) at playing poker at a reasonably high level and having a personality, I’ll guarantee you he doesn’t know something as basic as everyone’s stack all the time before making a decision that could be influenced by this info.”
Most casual players who talk about “GTO” frankly have no idea what they are talking about.
The best players taking a GTO approach to the game make all sorts of plays that would look absolutely wild to the untrained eye. It definitely doesn’t look “robotic” in the sense most people would mean.
I’m not sure who wrote that sentence about live poker and processing info but it sounds weird and untrue to me.
Definitly untrue, while gto solvers have influenced and evolved the meta there is nobody playing exactly like a computer, and you wouldnt want to, most high stakes players will incorporate gto like play but deviate from it where its profitable.
I think this person is conflating lack of personality with the rise of solvers, when i think its the rise of online poker that resulted in less personalities showing up. Whereas before in pokers golden era it was mostly people playing live poker moreso than online players.
Also there is some big personalities still crushing it, live poker is slower at high stakes, plenty of time to process…
that one poster’s remark caught my eye because unusual, I don’t know who they are. But that aside, the google description itself: unexploitable, no profitable exploitative adjustments. Startling.
I’m guessing this works mostly for Online poker, because live you have plenty of other tools to make the right (or wrong) choices. Such as observing demeanor, behavior etc.
having played more poker online than offline more recently, I would agree that GTO does take the edge off a wild hand, though there’s a lot more than a good hand to win the game just by chance.
Game theory is basically the opposite of that. It doesn’t matter who your opponent is, if you were able to play GTO, then they wouldn’t be able to beat you.
It makes no adjustments for who you’re playing against, and that’s the problem with it in practice.
You can do much better than GTO by exploiting your opponents mistakes, but GTO is extremely important for determining what mistakes are being made
Basically, yes. Game Theory Optimal strategy means you play in such a way that even if your opponent knew your strategy, it would not change their decisions. I can see how this could be misinterpreted as meaning “GTO players don’t bother reading people” but in reality, most GTO experts are great at reading other players and adjusting appropriately, precisely because they know to a very fine degree of precision what the best play is for a given situation in a vacuum. This allows them to identify mistakes quickly and know how to respond in order to maximize their advantage against imperfect opponents.
For example, Marc Goone aka Hungry Horse Poker on YouTube has blown up this year. He encourages a heavily exploitative style of play based on knowing how weaker players usually behave, and adjusting to take advantage of these tendencies. However, Marc is extremely well schooled in GTO. And in fact he often uses the solver to help him find the best ways to exploit.
I gotta say, unlike on 2p2 where I originally saw this discussion, here you get interesting and informative answers. The biggest poker forum in the world (or so they say) is all just gossip and bs.
Thank you guys.
This does not make sense. This implies that GTO players can vary in their tendencies, as in some GTO players can be tight and some loose, some aggressive, some passive, some bluff with more frequency etc. But those are the tendencies that we can exploit. A GTO player is one who is BALANCED in tendencies, shows no bias to tight or loose, aggro or passive. Theoretically, all GTO players should have identically balanced tendencies, no?
Aside from that, it is not clear to me what your stance is on this topic. What is the point that you are trying to make?
Not making a point, starting a discussion. I had heard many (conflicting) things about GTO, GTO + Nash Equilibrium, every poker forum has several threads about them. @younguru explains it best.
the short definition is: “Game theory focuses on situations where the outcome for one player depends on the choices made by others. Players must consider not only their own preferences but also how others might react to their actions.”
My initial reaction was that this is just a fancy name, somebody’s telling newbies “hey you don’t need 20 year experience, read my book to play like a pro”.
Turns out that is not the case, to apply Game Theory one needs to be a seasoned player to begin with.
I learned that it was devised for economics, by mathematician John von Neumann. Who also happens to be the first to apply it to poker. “He saw poker as a valuable model for understanding strategic interactions and deception, which led him to develop game theory”.
I totally agree. I’ve said many times on this forum that new players should not try to learn optimal strategy right away. First learn stack sizes. Then learn position. Then learn pre-flop ranges (by position) and opening sizing. Then go to the tables and practise it. Then learn post-flop strategy. Learn the difference between value and bluffing. Learn how to read the flops and learn how the hand can change your strategy on each street. Then go to the tables and practise it. Practise tons!
And when you practise, you will be practsing against weak players who are completely unbalanced and GTO will not help you much anyways. So learn to exploit them. Then build a bankroll and some confidence.
THEN start learning GTO because ONLY then, it will make any sense to you.
But if you can learn it, it will make your exploits much more powerful, as you will know all the best spots to step out of balance to exploit, as you will see all the imbalances in your opponents much better.
Myself, after 9 months and 100k hands here on Replay and learning all that I have so far (which is tons) and building up confidence and a half-decent bankroll, maybe I am finally ready to start learning it properly. Maybe not. I know that there are still things that I am missing.