$30 to ?????? playing exclusively while at work

Sounds like you're skeptical. It seems a lot of people think by playing "GTO" you're unexploitable. In fact you exploit yourself by playing it in some situations. Here's just one example of a spot where you exploit yourself by playing "GTO"

This is the response of UTG vs a BB 3 bet assuming you're playing against an optimal opponent, someone whose playing perfectly. In the BB the gto solution is 3 betting all kinds of hands at some frequency. 96s, 86s, 64s, K3s 66 J9s. You think opponents at 10nl or 25nl are randomising 20% 3 bets with 64s? Or remembering all the other frequencies.

Now assume you're playing against someone at 10nl who doesn't 3 bet bluff as aggressively as the solver and plays a more abc style of poker. 3 betting the strong hands and hands like AQs KJs and perhaps the odd A5s as a bluff. Look how drastically the optimal strategy changes.

Suddenly all those calls are massively loosing and all those 4 bet bluffs are just throwing money away. And this is just one spot that is underbluffed by population. That's not some theory it's a fact that this spot is underbluffed. So who knows how much you're loosing by sticking to what you think is an unexploitable strategy in this spot. Consider all the other spots people screw up, they add up to a lot! GTO is good to see how a spot should be played, but that's not how it's played in practice, not at the micros and not even at mid and low stakes.

Anyway good luck at the tables.

I'm not skeptical at all, sorry if it came across that way! I completely agree with the sentiment of your posts, I just can't agree with 100% of the details. But it's probably just a matter of phrasing/semantics and I do see your overall point & have taken it on board.

Those charts are interesting, what 3betting range did you give villain for the second one? Can you post a screenshot like you have for hero's 4betting range?

Sure, that's the response to a tight 3 betting range by bb. Someone who doesn't 3 bet bluff. It's an extreme example but illustrates the point of how much the ranges can change. This is the bb range. That by the way may seem extreme but it's a 4% 3 bet range which is not unusual to see at all at the micros, expecially bb v ep.

In practice hopefully they're not quite as tight as this, but they also won't be as loose as the solver. So the ranges will change a lot depending on who you're up against. That's why I think instead of having a one strategy fits all you adjust your strategy based on your opponents. Once you go down the exploit rabbit hole it's hard not to get excited, in my opinion anyway lol. There's just so many spots where it is correct to make big deviations. A lot of them are simple pre flop adjusutmens, but there's untold post flop exploits also.
GTO is just so hard to copy, I mean pre flop is the easiest street in poker, the ranges have been out there and free to look at for years now and people are still screwing it up, so imagine al ll the post flop exploits that exist also. I just think it's cool to think outside the gto box a little and consider all the possibilities.

Yeah I mean it's not too far off. I filtered my DB for only the regs I've played >200 hands with, and they have an average of 4.5% 3bet BB vs UTG. Compared to GTOw which says 5.6%. So closer to your range than the ES. What program is it that you're using btw?

Also, just to clarify beacuse I think you're slightly misusing the terms - using GTO doesn't necessarily mean you're playing an equilibrium strategy. Nodelocking and playing an exploitative strategy is also GTO because you're still using game theory to optimise your play. So it sounds like you're all for GTO, but just not into the idea of trying to use an ES (which I think most people are in agreement of at this point).

That's not something I node locked, that's by 2 card confidence, something they shared, I use GTOWIZARD, I believe that's PIO. I just thought it was a good example of how drastically the ranges can change when someone is playing something other than GTO.

But I disagree, GTO is just that, it's the optimal strategy, the result of millions of hands being played by a computer to find the equilibrium strategy, so by playing something else you're not playing gto. What you're doing is using the solvers and mda to find the exploits, I for sure am deviating from GTO and using a more exploitative style. The adjusted range is a response to an unbalanced opponent, someone who isn't playing GTO. Neither range is gto, they've both strayed from it. One because he's playing bad and the other because he would lose money sticking to the equilibrium ranges.
So no I'm not for playing GTO at all, quite the opposite. That's what I'm trying to say. It's useful to see how the game should be played, but people don't play like that. They make tonnes of mistakes. So trying to stick to something a computer came up with vs another computer doesn't guarantee you make money, it can actually be loosing you money vs opponents who are playing badly. Instead what I think these solvers should be used for is looking at the population tendencies and the tendencies of certain opponents and studying how the solver would adjust to their imbalances.

To learn some simple exploits Peter Clark's cash injection is pretty good and not expensive. Uri Pellegs course on upswing is amazing but pricy at $999. He did a podcast on the Mechanics of Poker podcast which is worth checking out.

Okay so summer has been incredibly hectic and I've barely had any chance to play. As well as my dayjob I also do some music production work as well as making/performing music of my own, and summer is always crazy with lots of festival shows on top of the dayjob on top of the freelance work. The good thing about that is that I had a little excess cash to beef up my roll!

I played a few thousand hands of 5nl before having the chance to add an extra €40 onto my roll. So was playing with around €85 at that point in total and decided to give 10nl a go. It was a little shaky at first and at my lowest point I was down to almost my entire roll on the 4 10nl tables, but luckily started running good from then and have worked it up to €220. Honestly the decision to 4 table whenever I play was definitely the right decision. A lot easier to not get frustrated when a couple thousand hand bad stretch is over in a few hours.

Only have 2 more gigs in the calender for the next couple months, and no family holidays or anything either. Have to finish off my newest EP but other than that, ready to start playing more poker again. Graph since I went busto:

Onwards and upwards!