2013: Make or break

[andy-akb]

Probably making it to Tremblant once or twice during the ski season, but still trying to find a good excuse to make it to Toronto, haha. Glad to see the live play is treating you well! Dont really follow any of the logs but decided to see what you guys were up to and as a GTO nerd, wanted to chime in a bit. Hopefully my stream of consciousness isnt too convoluted.

That being said, it is MUCH easier to implement an accurate GTO strategy pre-flop than it is post-flop. I haven't yet figured out the best way to implement this post-flop yet (with regards to flop raising ranges being well balanced, or even calling ranges well balanced from street to street). Anyone have any strategies they use? Purely practice and experience?

In a literal sense of the term GTO, this definitely isnt true. The fewer decisions you have remaining, the easier it will be to construct a GTO range for that specific decision. Im probably being overly nitty, but poker players in general love to create 3bet/4bet ranges that CardrunnersEV or whatever tell them are GTO, but unless these ranges are created using some postflop model and all limps and cold calls, they arent going to be accurate. When it comes to any reasonable stack size of HU poker, we cant do that, and when it comes to 6-max or FR, we cant even come close.

What we can do is come up with realistic ranges for our opponents and then use those to help construct ranges we can use readless, but again the reason I am making this distinction is because we cant forget that we are allowed to call and also that many hands we play are going to go postflop, both of which have significant impacts on our ideal ranges.

For postflop stuff, I would honestly just play around with CardrunnersEV using reasonable ranges and seeing how adding and removing certain hands from their ranges affects your optimal strategy. You have fewer players involved in the pots, more money already in the pot [so smaller stacks behind] and fewer decisions left to make, so they should be easier to figure out once you are confident in the ranges your put your opponents on.

For preflop I am not saying this type of work is unimportant, I am just saying that you shouldnt confuse it with GTO and you shouldnt let contrived 3bet/4bet ranges prevent you from thinking about cold calls. You are a very talented and creative player, so I know you think about these things, I am just speaking from personal experience that it is easy to fall into the trap of defaulting to "GTO" ranges created behind too many abstractions to the game.

[griffey24]

Probably making it to Tremblant once or twice during the ski season, but still trying to find a good excuse to make it to Toronto, haha. Glad to see the live play is treating you well! Dont really follow any of the logs but decided to see what you guys were up to and as a GTO nerd, wanted to chime in a bit. Hopefully my stream of consciousness isnt too convoluted.



In a literal sense of the term GTO, this definitely isnt true. The fewer decisions you have remaining, the easier it will be to construct a GTO range for that specific decision. Im probably being overly nitty, but poker players in general love to create 3bet/4bet ranges that CardrunnersEV or whatever tell them are GTO, but unless these ranges are created using some postflop model and all limps and cold calls, they arent going to be accurate. When it comes to any reasonable stack size of HU poker, we cant do that, and when it comes to 6-max or FR, we cant even come close.

What we can do is come up with realistic ranges for our opponents and then use those to help construct ranges we can use readless, but again the reason I am making this distinction is because we cant forget that we are allowed to call and also that many hands we play are going to go postflop, both of which have significant impacts on our ideal ranges.

For postflop stuff, I would honestly just play around with CardrunnersEV using reasonable ranges and seeing how adding and removing certain hands from their ranges affects your optimal strategy. You have fewer players involved in the pots, more money already in the pot [so smaller stacks behind] and fewer decisions left to make, so they should be easier to figure out once you are confident in the ranges your put your opponents on.

For preflop I am not saying this type of work is unimportant, I am just saying that you shouldnt confuse it with GTO and you shouldnt let contrived 3bet/4bet ranges prevent you from thinking about cold calls. You are a very talented and creative player, so I know you think about these things, I am just speaking from personal experience that it is easy to fall into the trap of defaulting to "GTO" ranges created behind too many abstractions to the game.

Thanks for the post andy!

Yah I think I'm focusing on GTO preflop in a few spots:

1. As PFR IP or OOP from 3bettor, making sure I'm defending enough of my opens by either 4b or call (obv calling more IP).
2. AS PFR IP or OOP from 3bettor, making sure I defend enough of my 4bets by calling a shove
3. AS PFR 3bettor, 3betting at an appropriate frequency related to their opening range
4. AS PFR 3bettor, defend at appropriate frequency vs their 4b by 5b shoving (not really assuming much 4b calling)

I think the main spot where the calling a 3b prob comes into play is on the button. If you purely defended a 50% btn open by 4b or folding, I don't think that would be ideal at all.

I guess when I said I was having more trouble implementing is that, I can have fixed 3b/5b ranges for a particular villains open. I can also have approximate open/4b/call of ranges from all my position, since I know what I'm opening with at every spot. So these ranges can mostly be fixed, with obviously some dynamic calling ranges vs diff opponents.

But postflop, where every board has a diff number of combos I might want to call, or raise or fold vs diff villains, it's tough to stay perfectly balanced.

How's your grind these days?