Introduction to Small Stakes No-Limit Hold ’em: Help Them Give You Their Money

I don't think the authors claim to have expertise on GTO. Not sure of the relevance of GTO to 1/3NL. That is maybe partly why they wrote a low stakes book. I am they and most people here know something about GTO. GTO means information based on solvers, not general game theory.

There's not much of a difference between multi-way and heads-up? There's tons of situations where you'd fold multi-way but play heads-up. A heads-up solver isn't going to teach you that.

You sound like a complete fraud. And given the number of silly posts you make in a day, I doubt you'd have time to study solver output or understand them even if so inclined. I don't know what axe you need to grind, but please stop embarrassing yourself and wasting everyone's time.

So you’ve spent the money on Upswings libratus package? And you examined the EV of diff options HU vs MW and you found there to be huge differences ?

Cool. I didn’t find that.

GTO is actually exploitative. People just think it defensive because when you have two solvers play the best either one can do is break even. If you force one solver to make mistakes the other will absolutely adjust to exploit it.

You are wasting your money on GTO packages when you play 1/3.

There is maybe a slight difference between the solvers' assumptions and 5-way to the flop at live low-stakes.

I have no reason to purchase such a course. But you pretend you have, yet you didn't seem to know the Upswing course wasn't based on Pluribus (and who says such a course is the final word?), and incorrectly cited it when trying to make a point. You continually put forth your supposed credentials as some sort of proof you know what you're talking about. Yet you never explain why your view is correct. You just tell other they're wrong, and cite these fake credentials. No one believes you have access to Pluribus. No one believes you could glean anything out of Pluribus hand histories even if you studied them. No one believes you can beat 1/3 NL. The S&M book has many examples explaining their point of view. No such examples from you demonstrating otherwise. And their credentials are well know in the poker community. And their education background is well known. That doesn't prove their recommendations are correct. But criticizing those recommendations without backing up your opinions with explanations beyond your fake credentials is laughable. You're obviously just a troll who gets off tearing down the work of others without contributing anything of worth of your own.

Have I made my point?

Mic drop

Your interchanging solver output with GTO. They're not the same thing. No one knows what the GTO strategy is to NL poker, but the GTO strategy doesn't change based on the strategies of the players. Solvers are a tool we use to try and come close to what the GTO strategy is. But solvers can also be used to find exploitable strategies based on assumptions.

GTO is not exploitable by definition. Solvers, on the other hand, are trying to exploit by design. If, and that's a huge "if", you properly define the ranges of the players and properly node lock how the players will act/react in the game tree, then you can get a strategy that exploits the player's weaknesses (as defined). But if the ranges or node locks are off, so is the strategy, and that strategy is exploitable by the very players that strategy was trying to exploit.

The only time the GTO strategy would change would be if you changed the rules of the game. Not if you changed the strategies used by the players.

Have you read the book in OP? It is a lot cheaper than that Upswing package.

I do use the 2 terms interchangeably but even a static gto balanced strat with zero adjustments. I would argue it more than most humans. While gto isn't making any effort to exploit its also never being exploited and will naturally make money off of mistakes. On a recent episode of solve Berkey and turtle said a gto strat would crush a low stakes live game for at least 30xbb per100.

Part of the reason Pointless can't beat 1/3 is he is spending money on fancy GTO packages when it would make sense only to study the basics of GTO. Spending $500 on some GTO information would only be appropriate for a winning mid to high stakes player. I would suggest he read the book he is criticizing and other books and videos geared towards low stakes games.

I read the book in OP and made some criticisms of it based on actually reading it. I would be interested if Pointless had read it and had comments on specific things in the book.

30 bb/100? Sounds optimistic, especially for a full ring game with a typical rake. If you get 40 hands per hour, that's 12 BB per hour, which is very good. I don't know what the best exploitative players make at the lowest stakes, but it can't be that much more than that. But I agree, GTO would fair better than most players normal strategies would, if there was such a thing. But no one is playing GTO, since it isn't solved and it's too complex even if it was. That said, using solvers to improve a player's game, even with incorrect assumptions regarding ranges and player tendencies, will probably make that player better faster than that player would be left to his/her organic learning curve and other learning methods. It's definitely a good investment for a serious player.

If I am in a ring game where half the players play only 10% of their hands and the other half play 60%, and I know who is, who I will gladly crossbook with a pure GTO bot (that will play the same way against both) in that game.

That number seems a little high to me.

There's also confusion here. What GTO does is to maximize your mimnimum expectation. This is known as the Maximin Principle, and you can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax

"When dealing with gains, it is referred to as "maximin" – to maximize the minimum gain."

And the picture on this page will show what a saddle point looks like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_th...

So the point to be made here is that assuming the 30 bb estimate is correct, there should now be plenty of spots where correct exploitive play would increase that number.

Mason

I’ve beaten 1/3 2/5 many thousands of hours per stake. Nice try. I don’t care what you believe.

I don’t see how you can criticize something you know admittedly close to nothing about which is the same issue I take with the authors/ the book.

I’m sure their book has lots of good advice. That doesn’t mean that all of their advice is canon. After asking to see what recent studying they have done of GTO from sites they mentioned, they didn’t say any

I don’t have any reason to believe that the authors know enough about present day gto theory that is being taught on RIO or upswing such that they can criticize it. In fact I have reason to believe the opposite

Well I am looking to figure the maybe into a yes no. I am not criticizing the book for not taking a gto approach

Yes, but you've been attacking us non-stop, yet have no idea as to what we're doing in this book. And there are a couple of spots where we do mention game theory and suggest some adjustments because of it.

By the way, I don't spend hours upon hours looking at solver output (even though I do recognize that these are marvelous programs). But recently, I've been doing some reading and see the following:

1. The authors are able to repeat what the solver results are.

2. The authors frequently don't understand why the solver comes to the determination that it does and will either give no reason as to why the solver produces the particular solve or they give at best a confused reason as to why the solver produces the strategy that it does.

3. I suspect you would be in this second group.

MM

He attacks everyone in every post in every thread. Wear the badge with honor

Sure I’m not an author and I’m not selling a book with bad advice, first of all.

You can just say you haven’t spent any time on upswing or RIO studying modern poker gto stuff.

I’m sure there are other resources out there you can explain to us

Can you give an example of what in this book you think is bad advice? I mentioned ITT several things I thought were bad advice.

Over limping KK in the CO after 3 people limped before you

I’ll leave you guys be. I’ve made my point already and enough times

There really isn’t such a thing as “present day gto theory”. The gto theory that existed the instant the first hand of holdem was dealt is the same exact one in place now.

Of course the methods of studying solutions are immensely more available but theory is same as it always was. And Phil galfond and Doug Polk don’t own it and you don’t have to join a training site to study it.

That was mentioned in the Introduction at the beginning of the thread. Have you read the book?

Of course when a play like this might be correct is explained in the book. But PW has no idea/understanding of what the book says.

We'll miss you.

Mason