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

I am often one of the last people to defend Mason and Sklansky on these forums, but to be fair to them they were using GTO concepts long before there was anything anyone would remotely call GTO.

I think it is silly to say that they don't have any training in GTO.

Promise? Pinky swear?

There may be some GTO concepts which are useful in 1/3 NL. For example, you don't want to cbet so much on boards that favor the caller or when OOP and you can make large or small sizings, not standard percent of pot.

The book mentions an example where you raise with A5s and the solver recommends sometimes making a 4-bet. At low stakes, the 3-bettor probably has QQ+. AK or tighter, so the 4-bet bluff would be really bad. You obviously don't want to make GTO recommended small preflop raise sizes. Making 1/3 pot range bets on the flop generally really bad, particularly in 4-way or whatever pots. You can't apply GTO directly, as GTO does not deal with 4-way + pots and doesn't understand loose-passive play. You should play small pps in most situations, because you are likely to get multiway pots and opponents will pay off sets. You also want to play suited aces, mainly to stack someone with set over set.

I am not an expert at GTO, but understand some basics. I haven't actually used a solver. I find some of the RIO etc. videos where they spend 30 minutes going over a hand with solver charts in the background tedious and not helpful. There are other videos with like 10 things we have learned from solvers which seem more useful. I also feel that some videos go overboard on taking a GTO approach, worrying about what we block and unblock, when that information should only be used in very borderline cases. Sometimes, it seems like video authors are afraid to discuss things not in terms on GTO, for fear of being branded old school.

It becomes more important the higher the stakes. If someone wrote a book on how to beat 5/10 NL and didn't understand GTO that would be an issue. Maybe important online, but I would not play online today for various reasons. Bart Hanson has free videos going over 2/5 NL hands, some 1/3 and some 5/`0 or bigger. Those videos often discuss GTO concepts as part of practical mid stakes play.

I don't agree that the authors knew about GTO before it became such a thing being too relevant. There is a lot of recent information from solvers that understand game theory etc. does not help with.

I guess Pointless went away when I pressed him on whether he read the book. It would be more helpful to discuss specific disagreements with the book and specific ways GTO should be applied to low stakes live play.

Actually, I would think it's still (trying to) play GTO after it node locks. If you have your opponent always folding aces, the computer will play the best GTO strategy against that proclivity by itself, which means that the computer will assume that the other guy is asking his own solver to come up with the best GTO strategy when it can't play aces (perhaps due to a proposition bet). What your solver WON'T do is assume that if this guy is stupid enough to fold aces there are probably a lot of other things he is doing wrong.

No it wouldn't lmao. They're just hustling to sell courses to 20 year old weekend warriors and GTO heroes playing low stakes NLHE.

We have discussion of this exact play in the book. See the chapter "Consider Huge Reraises with Those Top Four Hands."

Mason

The solver is looking for the Nash Equilibrium based on the inputs. That's different than the GTO solve for the game as a whole, which is based on the rules of the game and known facts (stack sizes, which player is in position, etc.). It's sort of like GTO, in that it's optimal for the assumptions, but it's based on assumptions which could be, and almost certainly are to some point, wrong. Thus, that solution can be exploited. The GTO solution can never be exploited. In practice, you never know what you're opponent will do, and even if you guess right, he might change the way he plays in the future, foiling your solver solution. In the example you cite, if it was a rule that aces always must fold, then the solver solution would approach a GTO solution for the aces-must-fold game, based on the limitations of the solver. But in the aces-must-fold game, folding aces isn't an assumption, it's a rule.

I doubt it. The only thing you've beaten is a dead horse with your nonsense. And I have a lot of experience with people like you who exaggerate their credentials and knowledge.

Good riddance.

There are people selling GTO courses for low stakes NLHE? That sounds like close to scamming.

I mean, I don't know who's buying those courses, but somehow I don't think it's players capable of beating live 10/20 and up.

I have gotten good GTO information from the free Upswing videos and the free version of Simple GTO trainer. Unless you are playing high stakes or online, I think you are wasting your money paying for anything on GTO. I used to have RIO Elite, but mostly watched the PLO and mixed games videos. I don't care for holdem much, and found the RIO NLHE videos with the solver charts tiresome.

Well first Berkey hates GTO and admits to being a feel player. It would be impossible test as nobody is gonna let anyone saddle up to the table and run GTO wizard. I do think a str8 GTO strat would destroy a live low stakes game. It would make a money every time the other players made mistakes and low stakes live players are horrible and make lots of mistakes

One way to find out. Bring your laptop and play according to the outputs.

How do you know what GTO is for 5-way pots? You won't get that from a solver. Then can you beat them at a decent hourly rate after rake and tips?

Do 5 way solvers not exist? I know about simple 3way but i assumed someone would have invented a 4+ way solver by now. If not then yea that's a bit of an issue

I just read the introduction to the book where Sklansky states in part, "However some computers are programed to alter their usual tactics if you input specific tendencies of the opponents. And they'll do better than GTO tactics if the inputs are accurate. . ." That is pretty much demonstrates he already knew the point I way trying to make. Perhaps he thought I didn't know what the solver was trying to do. We're (all poker players) getting into discussions on what we mean because we're using the term GTO differently. It would be great if everyone in the poker community used the term in the same way. Are we talking some kind of static thing independent of player tendencies (like I think), or a way of thinking, or simply balancing based on known or assumed tendencies, or solver outputs?

Pluribus is a bot that played 6-way against live professional players, and supposedly beat them over 10,000 hands. An analysis by another party suggests it lost. There were two types of matches, Pluribus vs 5 live players (10,000 hands), and one live player vs 5 times Pluribus (against two different pro opponents, 5000 hands each).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluribus_(...)

http://kevinwang.us/lets-analyze-pluribu...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scie...

Pluribus isn't a solver in a sense that you can input ranges into it and it isn't available to the public. But obviously the game was "solved" to some degree in order for it to play the game and beat the professional players. It didn't adjust for player tendencies. There are YouTube videos showing the specific hands.

My statement in the book is sort of technically wrong as well. What I am trying to say is that if you tell the perfect GTO computer that it should assume that an opponent plays a certain hand in a non GTO way, it will exploit his play via the GTO strategy that would now apply if the locked tactic of the opponent was part of the rules of the game.

Can you remind me which chapter the reasoning of this is explained regarding the J97 flop?

The general reasons are covered in several places. Namely beware of having few outs, beware of opponents whose bets are usually, but not always, with hands that beat you or are favored over you, and beware of situations where there are more rounds of betting to come, and you can't get all in early. In this particular case it would have been right to call or possibly make a small raise on the flop if the opponents are timid and straightforward. If they are the opposite, I am almost positive it is a fold. But not to the point that I would enshrine this particular recommendation or the precise reasoning in the book. The hand was mentioned mainly to illustrate how unusually some hands should sometimes be played. Sorry that the introduction (which was written before most of the main text) might have given a different impression.

I don't hate the flop fold. Low stakes players are generally passive so when one bets with multiple players left the act they likely have a jack at worst. Kings are in good shape against a jack but that's the bottom of their value range. It's the flat pre that I hate. I assume David was going for a Craise but you can't count on these players to raise at least not in general. Now if he was wanting to play a multiway pot then i have no idea what he was thinking. Also I would call flop unless it's raised before it gets to me.

Thanks, this elaboration makes sense.

While it's taken a couple of months to do so, this book is now #1 on the Amazon Best Sellers in Poker list:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/bo...

Thanks to everyone who bought a copy.

Mason