Just kidding, there is a darkness inside me I am battling with everyday
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There are two wolves inside you. How are you not dead?
GTO, over the very long term is such that it doesn’t matter what happens, as GTO will win over the extreme long term no matter what, if play GTO purely, correctly. That’s the extreme long ter. In the shorter term, players like Goatsoup, Rain, Excaliburn’s, Younguru, Lihiu, myself, etc, can exploit the sh!t out of GTO, and profit, win off of GTO, in the shorter term, where we are profitable long term doing that. Now if GTO played us forever, it would probably be about break even between GTO and us. But GTO doesn’t have to play us forever, etc, as GTO plays different players, fields, etc, and over the extreme long term vs the different players, fields, stakes, etc, eventually GTO will win out, be profitable no matter what, etc, because GTO doesn’t have to play us forever, and gets to play others. Also GTO is designed so that no matter what is done GTO eventually wins out in the extreme long term, extreme end. The thing is tho, GTO won’t get to that point with against us, because GTO won’t play us long enough for that to happen, so because of that, GTO will lose to us in the shorter term.
Also like Lihui said it’s pointless to PURE GTO at play chips, Replay, lower stakes, etc, because its easier to exploit players, then to GTO player’s and win in the shorter term. GTO is more designed for real money higher stakes, against balanced professionals, sharks, etc.
GTO is a good baseline, and good for preflop opening hand ranges, but it’s better to mix GTO with exploitative poker, where you use baseline GTO poker, and GTO opening baseline hand ranges, and then play according to deviation, and exploit deviation, accordingly, etc. exploitative poker skill such as spotting tells, handrange reading, etc, is just a valuable as GTO poker and should be mixed with GTO poker. GTO poker is more of a baseline for if you don’t know what to do, how to play, can’t handrange opponent, can’t spot tells, can’t exploit opponent, etc, then GTO is a good fallback option.
To use Rain’s example, Highschool poker is neither exploitative or GTO, College is GTO or Exploitative. PRO is using a good mix of both GTO, and Exploitative.
I disagree with one part of your summary: if any of us played enough hands vs. a perfect GTO opponent, I imagine we’d all lose, not break even.
I like to think of GTO guidance as my framework for how to approach each spot. A lot of people say stuff like “I’m an exploitative player” but without a good grasp of GTO principles, in reality what ends up happening is a lot of these players are just taking more or less bad lines that constitute more or less serious errors against a properly balanced opponent.
GTO often helps me understand not only what to do, but WHY to do it. Sometimes the solver’s recommendations are kind of inscrutable, and trying to reverse-engineer the logic can give you access to a deeper understanding of how we win chips playing poker.
More pragmatically speaking, understanding GTO fundamentals opens a whole new world of free coaching content that basically sounds like a foreign language otherwise. I’ve been learning a ton lately from 2CardConfidence on YouTube, but if I had not invested a lot of time in learning the basics of GTO and how to use solver outputs to construct a range/actions at different points in the decision tree, I would have a really hard time following most of his excellent instructional content.
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I play at least 90% of my hands heads up. Great time to bluff and steal blinds.
If you just lay there, you’ll eventually get run over!
Works for me here and live for cash in Reno…
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Exactly! Get busy living or get busy dying!
Whenever my friend @chelsea031 and I are in the late stages of a tournament, where few players have more than 20bb, we like to say GET BUSY and it reminds us both to be fearless because at this stage, aggression wins! 
Is a bit misleading to say that GTO is a good baseline. Being able to extract useful heuristics from a GTO solution gives you good base to build exploits around, but if it was actually possible to play perfect GTO, you’d just do that.
We seem to have got a fair way off track though, so I created this thread if anyone is interested in seeing if they can think like a solver: Simple Solver Quiz - Poker Discussion - Replay Poker
I’m fine if that thread gets taken over by a GTO vs exploits discussion
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At nearly 82, guess which one I choose!
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Look I’m just saying, you don’t get snapped off like this by K6o by folding a lot: great runout tho 
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8-1 still is very close to perfection.
I have a mini streak going on now 2-0 heads-up
Hand #1198020551 · Replay Poker (casino.org)
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I had a mini streak going.
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As a wise man once said, “All things go, all things go”
Well, I tried going wide and aggro heads up in the final 2 of a tourney today. I was the bigger stack. I lost it all in about 3 hands. Could not have gone worse.
I’ll try again, because this can’t be as bad a s my normal heads up play.
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You shoved over an open with a suited wheel ace off 13bb and lost to a pocket pair. shrug
I guess you could fold, but I think shove is totally fine. Villain can (and should) have plenty of Kx for you to be ahead of, not to mention his own raggy aces that will chop a lot of the time.
Can’t see that you made any real mistakes. Variance is wild at this stack depth. GGs and move on IMO 
What the heck, sure.
4
~ This one was my real error but I’m sure that I was screwed anyways.
5
~ dead xQ
Eh, in retrospect, maybe it’s not the greatest spot as you likely have 0 fold equity, which is a big part of what motivates playing those weak aces aggressively in the first place. But you’re both just so shallow. It’s hard for it to be too wrong to just shove any halfway decent hand preflop.
Okay, I honked it again but it took a while. I was hugely waay up and blew it. I think I played better this time and probably lost the whole thing when screwing up one hand where I raised a draw post flop. Got sucked out when I valued pre with AA and he shoved with AQs. I called and of course the run out goes spade spade spade. That’s not the problem though.
I think if I iron this out a bit I can do this. My question is:
Should I fold crap, shove okay/decent and value primo? Or should I shove everything decent and up?
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@napkin_holder Looks like you figured that out! 
Feint, parry, thrust.
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