If you have to choose one, will you use the theory of the game or exploit strategies based on the table? This has become one of the hottest topics in Poker for years. Almost all modern high bet crushers spend extensive time working with breakers to develop strategies that are close to our current understanding of the optimal game theory (GTO). Supporters of exploitation-weight strategies argue that using a GTO-based strategy means you cannot take advantage of your opponent’s mistakes, and you lose a lot of value as a result.
Poker Strategy Is 2021
You will learn:
- Why don’t you have to choose between two types of strategies.
- Expensive error players often make when playing exploitatively.
- How to form your poker strategy into 2020.
So let's start!
What Is GTO?
The term “GTO” is thrown around today, often wrong, so we have to review what it is. If you have a solid GTO understanding, this will be reviewed for you – you can jump to the next section. The optimal strategy game theory is a strategy that cannot be exploited by your opponent. In other words, if you play a true GTO strategy there is no way that allows your opponents to get excellence to you. (Or in terms of casino games like blackjack where edges are built, gto minimizes the edge). The easiest way to describe this applies it to rock-paper scissors (or roshambo).
The GTO rock-paper scissor strategy is to randomly select one of three options and play each exact 1/3 of the time. If you do this, it doesn’t matter what your opponents do, in the long run you have to win on time 1/3, tie 1/3 of time, and lose 1/3 of the time.
While the GTO strategy for rock-paper scissors is easy to understand, in poker it is far more complicated. GTO strategy no limit hold’em exists, but it is not yet known. This game is too complicated to be completed with current technology. However, we have understood some of the GTO concepts, such as the minimum defense frequency, a bluff-to-value ratio, and mixed frequency dramas, which are used sophisticated players to form their strategies.
What Is A Exploitative Strategy?
Exploitative strategies are a strategy that aims to utilize errors and tendencies of opposing players. Let’s use the stone paper scissors again to illustrate the exploitative strategy. Suppose you know that your opponents use a heavy stone strategy, playing rock 40% of time and paper and scissors each 30% of the time. You can exploit this opponent by always playing paper. Now you will win 40% of the time while binding 30% and losing 30%. But it might not be long for the opponent to realize what you do and change their strategy. In fact, they can always play scissors and defeat you at any time – until you change your strategy. But then you can always play rocks, then they can always play paper, and keep going.
Every exploitative strategy you use can be deflected by a different exploitative strategy, and can begin to feel like a guess game. This is one of the main downsides playing exploitatively – it opens up for exploitation.
Poker is a much more complex game than rock-paper scissors, but the same concept applies. If you always fold a specific opponent’s river bet because he ‘never bluffs’, for example, they can catch and start bullying you.
GTO vs. Play Exploitatively Described In Less Than 2 Minutes
I want to enter an expert theory of the Matt widow 1.5 minute game explanation from GTO vs Exploitative Play from the UPSWing Lab training course. I do not recommend rolling past this video – it’s pure gold:
Join UPSswing Lab to access full GTO lessons, plus 64 other lessons that include important poker concepts. The important concept here is that while the GTO strategy will always win money, it won’t win the most money. If you know players who significantly multiply folding to deceive C-bets, for example, bets will be much better than checking even if the GTO solution will take both actions half of the time. So the question becomes, why even learn GTO if the exploitative approach can win more money?
You Don’t Have To Choose!
The good news is you don’t need to limit yourself to playing a strategy or something else. You must play a solid strategy, theoretically by default, making exploitative adjustments when you identify favorable opportunities to do so. However, the warning is that you need good and reliable information to make accurate exploitative adjustments. When you don’t have reliable info to base your exploitative strategy, you must rely on a healthy theoretical approach. Where different people are how fast and how big you have to change your strategy. Some people see one hand and make giant adjustments, sweep throughout their strategy only based on that hand. An example that is too simplified from one player has a problem following.
Examples of how exploitative strategies are misused
Mark played Live Poker and saw someone 3-bet with K7O from the starting position, so mark the label as “maniac.” Some orbits later, mark the call down versus the same triple player barrel with Middling’s hand he usually has folded, just to appear nuts. Mark’s error was assuming that the opponent’s Los Preflop play showed that he would play loose postflop too. Just because someone has a loose preflop strategy, that doesn’t mean they are crazy after. In fact, some players will strategically show crazy hands to make pictures that make them paid out later. See: When Mark saw that his opponent 3-bets K7o, he should not make adjustments to sweep throughout his strategy. Instead, it should make small adjustments to the preflop strategy versus the player, such as:
- 4-bet more often (to punish various opponents)
- Using smaller 4-bets (to put lots of marginal hands in their opponents in a harder place)
- Extending the range of calls 3 stakes (because he can call profitably with more hands versus the reach of his opponent)
The right way to make exploitative adjustments
In Live Poker you almost never get a significant sample size, so you have to be very careful with the adjustment you make. You have to draw conclusions based on the tendency of showdown and player, and you must be ready to adjust to your default strategy if your conclusion starts wrong. Poker online is different when using database and huds software. If you are normal in certain shares, you can have thousands of hands on some opponents and have statistics that are quite accurate from the way they play. In this case you will definitely want to use your data to make adjustments (when the sample is reliable).
Last thought
Some people think that the GTO strategy is only suitable for higher bets. They think that betting with a balanced cliff range and betting value on micro bets is useless because the player has all call stations that have never folded. This is not true. Here is a recent graph in the Upsswing Lab group member on Facebook:
As you can see, the red line (money was won without showdown) was very positive for a fairly large sample. This lab member is not only captured three barrels with air every hand, he just tries to think of the number of values he has in any place and uses the number of suitable cliffs to consider. This applies to shows even on the lowest bet, a healthy theoretical approach is an effective way to win money. If you want to develop in the current poker climate, you must understand what is theoretically healthy strategy. Of course there are times to adjust, but you cannot know when or how to make such a solid fundamental adjustment.
This article includes why you should develop a healthy strategy in theoretically, but it doesn’t really explore how to play such a strategy.
