How to improve my game outside the tables?

if you move up to 2/5 you'll probably win the same bb/hr pre-rake but you'll be paying less rake overall so that can easily take you to an 8-9 bb/hr winner just doing that.

GTO wiz can't be bought AIUI ... you can rent it _starting at_ ~$500 a year.

Seriously doubt going straight to a solver is the best way to learn ... there are a few courses in the 500-1.5k range that are almost certainly better value than renting GTOwiz.

There are also things like DTOpoker which are a cheaper GTOwiz.

Any courses you suggest?

Seen Bart Hansen already and also read The Course by Edd Miller.

Just checked DTO poker and seems that it has wayy less features than GTOwiz.

I think you're making the classic mistake of trying to learn a lot of things, but only on the most shallow level. The main thing you need to do is to play more so that the lessons you know now becomes ingrained in your head. If you don't have ideas on your preflop ranges, a solver isn't your next step.

Using something like GTO Wizard, you will get out what proportionate to what you put in. You really have to study and understand the solver output deeply and then being able to translate that to how to play at the table where people are going going to be making huge deviations from GTO. It is also not going to help you with playing multiway pots. I do think it is especially good for practicing in games vs a lot of aggressive regs.

One thing I have learned though is that whether it is vs recs or regs, there are just a ton of patterns to recognize. Everyone is extremely unbalanced in poker. Understanding how people play differently from a solver is key.

I started playing cardhouse/casino poker in 2021 and have been playing full time since 2023. I moved up very quickly from 1/2 and 1/3 games to 5/5/10/25 type games that had a lot of pros in them. One of the things that helped me to move up quickly was doing something lot of work with solvers/trainers. Is started out with solver+ and postflop+ on my mobile phone, but eventually moved on to GTO Wizard. Working with these programs and really digging into the why is something I absolutely love. So I put in a ton of hours studying, which is fun in and of itself to me, but also results in me making more money at the table.

I think the 3 best things you can do to improve rapidly in poker, roughly in this order are:

1. Learn preflop GTO ranges, but learn to deviate, mainly tighten up a lot when passive players start shoveling in a lot of money preflop.

2. Watch all the Hungry Horse Poker YouTube videos and actually try to implement the things Marc Goone Talks about. This is by far the best content on YouTube to learn live poker.

3. Use a program like GTO Wizard to study postflop solver output and make use of GTO trainers. Just be super curious and explore tons of different spots and really try to understand the WHY behind what the solver is doing.

Lastly, as you are learning all of these things, start to think critically more about the advice you hear and the advice you read. Find out who has opinions you respect and learn from them. Try to dialog about poker with them. Try to join a poker atudy group if possible. And disregard the opinions of people who you don't respect.

Thank you. You're right. Always best to focus on one thing at a time (squeeze rangers, middle pairs, cbet, donk bets...etc) since there are so many concepts to learn/apply.

Thank you for your advice as well.

Since you play full-time, how long your sessions tend to be? Do you find yourself at the beginning of the session super-focused, reading people, analyzing hands...etc and then comes a point where you're zoned out and just play mechanically due to mental exhaustion?

I've noticed that on the first hour of the session I play great, hyper focused but then I kind of "disconnect". It's like the mental battery wears off quickly.

GTO wizard is an amazing tool I've only been studying cash since May of this year (switched from MTT) but currently averaging around 10bb/hr after rake in 1/3 live. It's basically cheat codes if you put in the work. I would go so far as to say other classes or sims are negative EV because it cuts into the time you could be spending working through GTo trainer and lessons (also awesome).

Keep in mind you study GTO in order to know exactly how your opponents are deviating from GTO in order to maximally exploit them in low stakes cash. So you might experience a slight downswing in hourly until you fully absorb the adjustments. Another downside is you'll start laughing at all the terrible lines ppl take in these forums 😀.