It seems that you can't discuss poker strategy these days without hearing the term GTO. This should come as no surprise given that the promise of Game Theory Optimal poker is that it is completely unbeatable. Obviously I'm 100% on the GTO bandwagon given the contents of this blog, but like anything, GTO poker has its limitations and people seem to regularly ignore these limitations either out of ignorance or self-interest. Understanding GTO concepts will help any poker player (yes even microstakes players) improve their game, but it is not a holy grail that solves all of poker and guarantees free money.
The key thing to understand is that for most players, GTO can drastically improve your play in many specific situations. However, outside of heads up it cannot be used as a basis for an entire strategy, and you will be best off leveraging GTO concepts alongside standard play.
GTORangebuilder was built from the ground up with the strengths and limitations of GTO play in mind, and the only situations it analyzes are situations where its advice will guarantee you the stated EV. However, because of this (and because of computational limits), it's limited in what situations it can solve and it is designed to be a tool to aid you in improving your game, not a solution to all of poker. Anyone claiming to know an unbeatable strategy for what to do in every possible situation in say, a 6-max 100BB cash game, is confused about what GTO means, pure and simple.
For an in-depth look at the definition of a Nash equilibrium and how they are used in poker see this post. Today I'm just going to look at the technical definition and highlight exactly what it says. From wikipedia:
'In game theory, the Nash equilibrium is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy.'
The key word that people often gloss over here is 'own'. A player playing a GTO (or Nash Equilibrium strategy, I use the terms interchangeably), is guaranteed that if all the other players are also playing Nash Equilibrium strategies, that no player could unilateral change their strategy and increase their EV.
Lets first apply this definition to heads up where GTO poker does guarantee unbeatable play. And then we'll look at some three player examples where it all falls apart.
Suppose you are playing heads up vs a fish and you somehow are able to play perfect GTO poker, while the fish is not and makes many mistakes. You can imagine the mistakes the fish makes as him changing his own strategy from GTO to a weaker strategy. The definition above says he cannot possibly have gained EV by changing his own strategy. Furthermore, poker is zero-sum and you are the only other player so if he lost EV than you had to have gained that EV.
If you play GTO and your opponent plays anything else in a heads up game they cannot beat you, it is mathematically impossible. That is a powerful statement and it's what makes GTO so appealing. If perfect GTO play were known (which barring a major breakthrough like advances in quantum computing is unlikely to happen this century for the full NLHE game) it truly would solve heads up forever.
The power of GTO play isn't limited to situations where only two players are dealt into the hand. You can apply the same logic as above to any 'subgame' (poker situation), in which only two players are left in the hand. If only two players see the flop, while the preflop action might determine the starting pot size on the flop as well as the flop hand ranges for both players, from that point on the players are playing a heads up two player subgame in which GTO play is unbeatable. Thus while you might have put yourself in a bad situation by seeing the flop, a GTO strategy will be able to determine the exact EV of the situation you've put yourself in and if you follow the strategy, no matter what your opponent does you are guaranteed at least that EV. If they do not play GTO themselves, your EV can only go up.
The vast majority of poker hands are heads up by the river so by applying GTO strategies to heads up situations that come up in your games you can greatly improve your win-rate in all sorts of post-flop situations whether you play 6-max, full ring, or heads up.
EDIT: In my CardRunners Video I redid these calculations more precisely using the Hold'em Resources calculator. The basic result is the same but the exact numerical values / strategies below are not as exact as they could be, see the video for more precise results.
In 3-handed situations the entire premise of GTO starts to break down, because a decrease in one of our opponents EV does not necessarily mean an increase in ours. In fact, it is often the case that an opponent who makes mistakes can actually decrease our EV even if we continue to play GTO. The easiest way to see this is to start with a simple example of a 3 handed push/fold equilibrium in a short stacked scenario.
Suppose we are 3 handed and all players have 15BB and are playing shove/fold poker in a rake free cash game (15BB is a bit to deep for this to be a great idea, but that doesn't matter for the sake of the example). The equilibrium solution for this game is reasonably simple and can be found here.
Basically the button shoves about 29% of his hands, the small blind calls with 14.5%, and the big blind over calls with a very tight range (9.4%) and calls if the small blind folds with a wider range (14.8%). If the button folds, then the small blind shoves a very wide range (46%) and the big blind calls 28%.
Lets assume the hero is in the small blind. If you put that scenario into an analysis tool like CardRunnersEV (I ran CREV with a 1 million hand monte-carlo sample which is pretty good but not perfectly accurate, particlarly because CREV rounds to the nearest 1BB/100) you can easily see the expected value for each player when playing the Nash Equilibrium strategies. They are:
Button EV: 19 bb / 100
(HERO) Small Blind EV: -11 bb / 100
Big Blind EV: -8 bb / 100
If all 3 players play GTO, on average each player will win 19bb / 100 in the button, lose 11bb / 100 in the small blind, and lose 8bb / 100 in the big blind, netting to 0bb / 100 break even play.
Now we know from the Nash definition that if any player starts from the Nash state (where all 3 players are playing Nash) and changes only his own strategy, that he will reduce his EV. Lets assume that the button is a weak tight player and does not shove nearly enough. We know this has to decrease the buttons EV, but nothing about the definition of a Nash Equilibrium guarantees that the button's change in strategy won't also decrease the hero's ev.
If the button only shoves: 55+, AJ+, KQ, KJs, QJs, JTs the EVs become:
Button EV: 15 bb / 100
(HERO) Small Blind EV: - 17 bb / 100
Big Blind EV: 2 bb / 100
The hero's EV is down 6bb per 100, even though he is still playing the GTO strategy. The hero's EV decreases by more than the buttons EV, even though the button is the player making a mistake! If you imagine that every player plays GTO in all positions, except for the one fishy player who is too tight on the button, what happens to the hero's winrate? He wins 19bb / 100 on the button, loses 17bb / 100 on the small blind, and loses 8bb / 100 on the big blind, for an average of -2bb / 100. Playing GTO poker in 3+ way scenarios can lose money if there is a fishy player at the table who is not playing GTO.
If you imagine that the Big Blind player is a smart reactive player it can get even worse! The condition that the big blind must lose EV if he changes his strategy away from the Nash Equilibrium strategy no longer applies once there is a fish on the button. The Nash condition is only relevant when ALL players are playing Nash. Now that the button has changed his strategy, the big blind player can change his strategy as well to increase his profit and to reduce our hero's ev. If the BB tightens up his over-calling range he can further reduce the hero's EV by almost another 1BB / 100 when the hero is in the small blind.
In 3-way pots with a fish a GTO strategy can lose and furthermore, a smart reactive player can adjust his strategy to make the GTO strategy lose even more.
It is important to note that the above are not due to ICM, they appear even in cash games. In SnG situations where ICM is a factor there are even bigger and more obvious instances where the presence of a fish can make a nash strategy -EV, but the fundamental issue in both cash games and ICM cases is the same.
This is in no way meant as a condemnation of GTO play. GTO strategies are unbeatable for any 2 handed situation and even in 3+ handed situations, understanding GTO theory will give you tons of insights into how to balance ranges and increase your EV. I believe that GTO will be the driving force in the continued evolution of poker strategy over the next 5 years. However, this post should act as a warning if you are ever considering turning off your brain and blinding following GTO. Anyone who misapplies GTO theory to scenarios where it doesn't hold, or who is using it as a crutch rather than as a tool, is going to quickly be left behind.
The key thing to understand is that for most players, GTO can drastically improve your play in many specific situations. However, outside of heads up it cannot be used as a basis for an entire strategy, and you will be best off leveraging GTO concepts alongside standard play.
GTORangebuilder was built from the ground up with the strengths and limitations of GTO play in mind, and the only situations it analyzes are situations where its advice will guarantee you the stated EV. However, because of this (and because of computational limits), it's limited in what situations it can solve and it is designed to be a tool to aid you in improving your game, not a solution to all of poker. Anyone claiming to know an unbeatable strategy for what to do in every possible situation in say, a 6-max 100BB cash game, is confused about what GTO means, pure and simple.
Nash equilibria defined:
For an in-depth look at the definition of a Nash equilibrium and how they are used in poker see this post. Today I'm just going to look at the technical definition and highlight exactly what it says. From wikipedia:
'In game theory, the Nash equilibrium is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy.'
The key word that people often gloss over here is 'own'. A player playing a GTO (or Nash Equilibrium strategy, I use the terms interchangeably), is guaranteed that if all the other players are also playing Nash Equilibrium strategies, that no player could unilateral change their strategy and increase their EV.
Lets first apply this definition to heads up where GTO poker does guarantee unbeatable play. And then we'll look at some three player examples where it all falls apart.
GTO in Heads Up:
Suppose you are playing heads up vs a fish and you somehow are able to play perfect GTO poker, while the fish is not and makes many mistakes. You can imagine the mistakes the fish makes as him changing his own strategy from GTO to a weaker strategy. The definition above says he cannot possibly have gained EV by changing his own strategy. Furthermore, poker is zero-sum and you are the only other player so if he lost EV than you had to have gained that EV.
If you play GTO and your opponent plays anything else in a heads up game they cannot beat you, it is mathematically impossible. That is a powerful statement and it's what makes GTO so appealing. If perfect GTO play were known (which barring a major breakthrough like advances in quantum computing is unlikely to happen this century for the full NLHE game) it truly would solve heads up forever.
Heads Up Subgames:
The power of GTO play isn't limited to situations where only two players are dealt into the hand. You can apply the same logic as above to any 'subgame' (poker situation), in which only two players are left in the hand. If only two players see the flop, while the preflop action might determine the starting pot size on the flop as well as the flop hand ranges for both players, from that point on the players are playing a heads up two player subgame in which GTO play is unbeatable. Thus while you might have put yourself in a bad situation by seeing the flop, a GTO strategy will be able to determine the exact EV of the situation you've put yourself in and if you follow the strategy, no matter what your opponent does you are guaranteed at least that EV. If they do not play GTO themselves, your EV can only go up.
The vast majority of poker hands are heads up by the river so by applying GTO strategies to heads up situations that come up in your games you can greatly improve your win-rate in all sorts of post-flop situations whether you play 6-max, full ring, or heads up.
GTO 3-handed
EDIT: In my CardRunners Video I redid these calculations more precisely using the Hold'em Resources calculator. The basic result is the same but the exact numerical values / strategies below are not as exact as they could be, see the video for more precise results.
In 3-handed situations the entire premise of GTO starts to break down, because a decrease in one of our opponents EV does not necessarily mean an increase in ours. In fact, it is often the case that an opponent who makes mistakes can actually decrease our EV even if we continue to play GTO. The easiest way to see this is to start with a simple example of a 3 handed push/fold equilibrium in a short stacked scenario.
Suppose we are 3 handed and all players have 15BB and are playing shove/fold poker in a rake free cash game (15BB is a bit to deep for this to be a great idea, but that doesn't matter for the sake of the example). The equilibrium solution for this game is reasonably simple and can be found here.
Basically the button shoves about 29% of his hands, the small blind calls with 14.5%, and the big blind over calls with a very tight range (9.4%) and calls if the small blind folds with a wider range (14.8%). If the button folds, then the small blind shoves a very wide range (46%) and the big blind calls 28%.
Lets assume the hero is in the small blind. If you put that scenario into an analysis tool like CardRunnersEV (I ran CREV with a 1 million hand monte-carlo sample which is pretty good but not perfectly accurate, particlarly because CREV rounds to the nearest 1BB/100) you can easily see the expected value for each player when playing the Nash Equilibrium strategies. They are:
Button EV: 19 bb / 100
(HERO) Small Blind EV: -11 bb / 100
Big Blind EV: -8 bb / 100
If all 3 players play GTO, on average each player will win 19bb / 100 in the button, lose 11bb / 100 in the small blind, and lose 8bb / 100 in the big blind, netting to 0bb / 100 break even play.
Now we know from the Nash definition that if any player starts from the Nash state (where all 3 players are playing Nash) and changes only his own strategy, that he will reduce his EV. Lets assume that the button is a weak tight player and does not shove nearly enough. We know this has to decrease the buttons EV, but nothing about the definition of a Nash Equilibrium guarantees that the button's change in strategy won't also decrease the hero's ev.
If the button only shoves: 55+, AJ+, KQ, KJs, QJs, JTs the EVs become:
Button EV: 15 bb / 100
(HERO) Small Blind EV: - 17 bb / 100
Big Blind EV: 2 bb / 100
The hero's EV is down 6bb per 100, even though he is still playing the GTO strategy. The hero's EV decreases by more than the buttons EV, even though the button is the player making a mistake! If you imagine that every player plays GTO in all positions, except for the one fishy player who is too tight on the button, what happens to the hero's winrate? He wins 19bb / 100 on the button, loses 17bb / 100 on the small blind, and loses 8bb / 100 on the big blind, for an average of -2bb / 100. Playing GTO poker in 3+ way scenarios can lose money if there is a fishy player at the table who is not playing GTO.
If you imagine that the Big Blind player is a smart reactive player it can get even worse! The condition that the big blind must lose EV if he changes his strategy away from the Nash Equilibrium strategy no longer applies once there is a fish on the button. The Nash condition is only relevant when ALL players are playing Nash. Now that the button has changed his strategy, the big blind player can change his strategy as well to increase his profit and to reduce our hero's ev. If the BB tightens up his over-calling range he can further reduce the hero's EV by almost another 1BB / 100 when the hero is in the small blind.
In 3-way pots with a fish a GTO strategy can lose and furthermore, a smart reactive player can adjust his strategy to make the GTO strategy lose even more.
It is important to note that the above are not due to ICM, they appear even in cash games. In SnG situations where ICM is a factor there are even bigger and more obvious instances where the presence of a fish can make a nash strategy -EV, but the fundamental issue in both cash games and ICM cases is the same.
Conclusions:
This is in no way meant as a condemnation of GTO play. GTO strategies are unbeatable for any 2 handed situation and even in 3+ handed situations, understanding GTO theory will give you tons of insights into how to balance ranges and increase your EV. I believe that GTO will be the driving force in the continued evolution of poker strategy over the next 5 years. However, this post should act as a warning if you are ever considering turning off your brain and blinding following GTO. Anyone who misapplies GTO theory to scenarios where it doesn't hold, or who is using it as a crutch rather than as a tool, is going to quickly be left behind.
The Pontiac GTO is an automobile that was manufactured by American automaker Pontiac from 1963 to 1974 for the 1964 to 1974 model years, and by GM's subsidiary Holden in Australia for the 2004 to 2006 model years. The first generation of the GTO was the first muscle car produced in the 1960s and the 1970s. The Pontiac GTO is considered by some to have started the trend with all four domestic. Poker rooms began rapidly opening within a few short years. Limit Texas hold'em was the most widely played game by far in the west, and seven card stud was the most widely played game in the east from the late 1980s until 2003. In the 1990s, poker and casino gambling spread across the United States, most notably to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Modern Poker Theory uses modern poker tools to develop a systematic approach to the analysis of GTO. It organizes the ideas and concepts in an intuitive manner that is totally focused to practical applications.
Gto Poker Wikipedia Wiki
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WSOP or the World Series of Poker is one among the biggest poker tournaments in the gambling world, which has been organized officially, in 1970. The bracelet of WSOP along with the cash prize of millions of dollars fascinates many players from the entire world that are keen to play poker in this tournament. This tournament is an apex of interest to all poker players. A mere participation of a poker player seems to appeal towards pride.
Main event[change | change source]
The WSOP event is conducted once in a year and thousands of poker players participates in it. There are the buy-ins ranging from $1500 - $10,000 and in most of the cases, playing by means of primary purchase is supposed by the players. Casino in ann arbor michigan. Buy-ins as well as rebuys is also allowed in some games while in some other games if there are no chips with a player he would not be allowed for purchasing any more chips.
How to qualify[change | change source]
Gto Poker Wikipedia Shqip
Anyone who wants to participate in World Series of Poker should get acquainted with the following things:
- Payment is required for pre-registration, which is revised every year. Payments can be made in terms of debit cards, credit cards, cashier checks or wire transfers.
- WSOP requires the pre-registration to be done at least prior to two weeks of the starting of the event. Beyond that time no registration would be entertained.
- The validation of the participants should be done with proof as they must be at least of the age of 21 years.
- For participating in the event, the proofs for adequate identification must be produced such as passport, driver's license or any other form of valid ID card.
- To enter into the WSOP event, the chips of prescribed value must be purchased. No cash payments are entertained instead there entertained RIO chips for purchasing for making payments in the rounds.
- No re-entries are permitted, only one person can enter through a single entry.
- Registration of third party on behalf of the candidate is not permitted in World Series of Poker, self-registration is must.
- Players who are restricted to play in casinos as per the government norms are ineligible for the games of WSOP.
Poker Gto Term
References[change | change source]
Other websites[change | change source]
Gto Poker Wikipedia Film
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