The GTO thread

[SSeville]

@SunPowerGuru

My girlfriend Becky (not her real name) returned tonight from Tennessee, and brought back some really nice moonshine, which I must admit I have been sampling to excess. I don’t see anything in the “Community Playbook” about posting while drunk, so screw it, let’s talk about the pipe dream of game theory optimal poker.

Ain’t gonna happen, ever, period.

It’s like asking someone to design an optimal race car. Optimal for what? Optimal for driving 1/4 mile in a straight line? Optimal for a road course? Optimal under NASCAR rules? Pro crews set up a race car for a race type, for a specific track, for specific race conditions. There’s no “one size fits all,” and there never will be… they have evolved past all that.

Eh, it would be easy for me to ramble on for 6.000 lines on how I feel about this subject. As someone pointed out in another thread, NLHE is a long way from being “solved,” and as far as I’m concerned, it never will be. Math and game theory will only take one so far. Yes, you should have a solid mathematical and theoretical foundation… no doubt about that, but in the end, you’re playing other people.

In the interest of brevity, let’s jump start this with a look at a game that IS solved… rock, paper, scissors. The GTO “solution” would be to throw rock 1/3 of the time, paper 1/3 of the time, and scissors 1/3 or the time, and to do so with no discernible pattern. Such a strategy will be unexploitable.

If both players used this strategy they would, on average, tie. They would be at Nash equilibrium, and any wins would be purely the result of luck. But what if only 1 player was using this GTO strategy?

Let’s say player 2 was throwing rock 50%, paper 25%, and scissors 25%, and look at it over 1200 throws…

The 600 times player 2 throws rock, player 1 wins 200, loses 200, and ties 200, for a net gain of exactly 0. The 300 times player 2 throws paper, player wins 100, loses 100, and ties 100, again for a net gain of 0. Same when player 2 throws scissors. One size fits all GTO gets you nowhere. It’s like Mohammed Ali’s “rope a dope,” a defensive stance.

The theoretical “exploitative optimal” strategy here would be to throw paper 100% of the time. You would win all 600 times your opponent throws rock. You would lose the 300 times they throw scissors, and tie the 300 times they throw also throw paper, putting you 300 units ahead over the 1200 throw series.

But c’mon, nobody is gonna let you throw paper 1200 times without making an adjustment to their own game. From this we can learn at least 2 things…

Undisguised exploitation strategies can themselves be easily exploited.

“Unexploitable” strategies are basically defensive.

For me, the take-away is to develop a solid base-line strategy, but be willing to deviate from that strategy as needed in order to benefit from the situational opportunities that arise from the human factors, tournament stage, and a myriad of other factors.

Most mistakes are frequency-based. You fold too much or call too much, or raise too much or whatever. Learn to spot your opponent’s frequency mistakes while minimizing your own, and you will be on the way to better poker.

Yeah, math and game theory are the foundation, but as Doyle Brunson says, “You ain’t playing solitaire kid.”

strong text

[Sassy_Sarah]

@SSeville

I have seen some really good players that on occasion will be the first to expose their hand at the end just for the purpose of advertising. He wants certain players to see that he played a rag, or he made an unusual betting pattern with a certain hand.

Exactly !!!

[Craig_Anthony]

I concur !

[No1_Cheater]

This is a really good post, but I would like to consolidate some of these ideas: GTO is a break-even strategy that utilises frequency and range balancing to counter exploitative strategies. It is most effective when used in conjunction with exploitative strategies. Hence, you defend yourself against exploitation whilst trying to find find ways to exploit your opponent.

I would also like to clarify that it shouldn’t be categorised as defesive or offensive. It protects your offensive game as much as your defensive one. For example, if you never bluff in specific spot your opponent can exploitably fold to your bets.

[county29]

Well, I try and fold the losers early and go to the river (if the hand goes that far) with my winners…ya’ll oughta try it…

[NakedNtheRain]

agreed on the chat room idea , but on the other hand , it take’s away from the FORUM time ,
anyone can make a chat room , but someone’s got to moderate it , so where does the poker time
come in ? … playing on the table’s , watching the forum, sitting in chat , that’s a hand full .

[Craig_Anthony]

Good morning.

This is just some constructive observation of your post, suggestions and a little criticism.

Please don’t take it the wrong way, it’s informational.

First off, typing in caps is a form of yelling, (FORUM) and well documented on the internet and it’s in your players rep handbook. 2nd what are you talking about ? Have you never been on a forum with a chat room ? Lastly, that’s why Replay Poker has Moderators and is promoting Player Reps every week to that position to moderate what goes on here.

I suggest you read the chat room thread, get acquainted with how a chat room would work here and then re post your thoughts or rebuttal here.

I’ll check back to see if you get the idea of the integration here.

Btw, community forums and chat rooms increase the community participation here at Replay Poker and that is one of the goals as outlined .

See you soon

Craig

[SetThisStr8]

@Original poster (Sunpowerguru). I see you are a thinking person and I understand how you think and feel about the subject. I know u are not looking to school top professionals, and stating that GTO is not important on replaypoker is certainly something I agree upon. U do also seem to understand that playing GTO-wise is playing unexploitibly and that the best strategy against a non-GTO style is to play exploitably in a way that over-exploits the, indeed, bad frequencies of the opponents. I further want to touch on some specific points.

‘NLHE is far from being solved’.

While this is true in a sense (it is truly impossible to find THE gto-solution as their are too many different scenarios and too many different bet sizes), it is very possible to play a nearer approximation of GTO then your opponent, and because of that, play better and win more chips:

1: consider the game of chess: this game is also impossible to solve, however computers have become way better than humans because of their better APPROXIMATION of the best moves (fun fact: while chess is a theoretical draw, computers tend to win against each other still sometimes, even at 90min/player/game, showing how difficult the game is)

2: Since last year, computers have overtaken humans in poker, this is in heads up no limit hold’em and very soon to be in 9-handed play. The computer (Libratus, google it) has a better APPROXIMATION of gto and this is the soul reason why it outplayed four of the best HUNLH players in the world in 120k hands at a rate of 12big blinds/ 100 hands, which is a very, very decent winrate.

3 :Their is an artificial intelligent poker programme out there with the name of pokersnowie which can point out your mistakes and the gravity of your mistakes, and by that, give you a ‘pokerrating/ pokerlevel’ The programme does not exploit any players, but still it wins more against players with bigger mistakes.
Thus you don’t have to exploit to win more against weaker players (but it can hel p when done correctly)
(How is PokerSnowie doing after 3.3 Millions hands played? | PokerSnowie Blog)

that is why a comparison with rock paper scissors GTO is misleading, to say the least. Poker is far more complex and this is the reason why playing GTO in poker will still have more merit against bad players then against good players:
in poker, an equivalent of throwing 100% rock and getting away with it against a GTO strategy is non-existent.
An unexploitable strategy means that you win against any other strategy (or break-even theoretically, but breaking even will almost never happen as the game is so complex), so they are not ‘basically defensive’ ( I think you interpret the fact that the primary concern is becoming unexploitable that it is defensive, but by doing this you make sure you win against any other strategy).

heads up limit hold’em has been solved! you can play the game theory optimal programme if you google the programme’s name: cepheus (or follow this link, but i’m not sure if posting links here is allowed (http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/)

regards

[No1_Cheater]

Chess hasn’t been proven to be a theoretical draw (even though it most likely is). Chess engines can also miss certain moves, as they are based off calculation and evaluation of positions as opposed to concepts and strategies. You’ve also got to consider that one has defined moves and outcomes, whilst the other is based in probabilities and game theory.

[Tessduville]

Sunpowerguru, 'truly enjoyed your post–Tessduville.emphasized textstrong text

[SetThisStr8]

you basically prove my point.

I only addressed the similarity between chess and poker in the fact that having the closest approximation of the best play possible is enough to be the best entity in the world at the particular game, thus without any necessity of actually solving the game.

Chess engines can miss certain moves, Poker engines such as Libratus can defer from optimal play,
But in the end they will win the game more just because they are better overall

I agree ofc that they are different games but chess has defined moves (a4, Nf3, etc.) and poker has defined moves (raise, call, fold) . A chess computer finds very good chess moves by calculation and evaluation while a poker computer finds the best moves by recognition and trial and error in its huge database of hands played against itself (which is very much correlated with, indeed, probability).