The Fundamentals of GTO Poker

[@GTOWizard]

Quiz: What is the most exploitative strategy against GTO? (comment below)

[@DoubleBassX2]

Whatever Postle was doing.

[@JeffreyYamada]

Report them for cheating

[@antonvlasov949]

All - in preflop

[@brickingbad9099]

Not showing up at the table

[@BenJohnson_28864]

GTO is a funny thing. The only time GTO is the highest EV strategy is vs a GTO opponent. But that is only if we disregard rake. With rake, not playing would be the highest EV option.

[@Pickthewinner]

Any advice on how to use G. T. O. Wiz to play more G. T. O. ? Just keep practicing hands every day???

[@userWCFL]

Yeah

[@badvideo169]

still watching but very clear text and sound and images, good job

[@julianparrish8197]

As a complete GTO noob wheres the starting point...yes I know about the site but where do I start?

[@borwaywong]

yeah same since GTO confuses me in terms of why certain actions are raised, or called or how to use GTO and navigate all the settings or even how do you know that uve raised approximately 70% of the time since each different hand would have their own percentage of when you should be raising. Is this all just done via wrote learning or is there a way to work out the approximate EV in each scenario?

[@adragonro]

First thing that comes in mind is a sotuation where u think u fold too much on the river. U can look into the situation and find a hand that u would normaly fold, but is a positive call in GTO.

[@camilotm]

Hi,thanks for the video!!.I got one quick question,could you give more or less an example of how "counter exploits always gain exponentially more than the initial exploits".Let's say for example we know someone overfolds river ,then we decide to overbluff river (that's the first exploit),so if we get counterexploited ,the rival begins overcalling while we still overbluff.But in which way this would make our rival gain waaay more money against the first exploit?.

[@GTOWizard]

To clarify, here I am talking about max exploit vs max counter exploit. So if your rival is over-folding even a little bit, the solver will bluff every bad hand on the river. This would result in a small EV gain for hero. If your rival counter-exploits you, now you'd be losing a ton of EV with all your bluffs. This would result in a BIG EV gain for villain.

[@camilotm]

@@GTOWizard Thanks a lot for the answer,so I understand that those two situations would only be "comparable" in terms of ev if in the first exploit we expect rival to fold every hand,then if we bluff every hand we would be making a ton of money. But that's usually not the case,rival's behaviour can go from overfolding by a bit to heavily overfolding every single bluffcatcher and that's something we don't know. Still, regardless of the situation,we are forced to bluff 100% of hands.This in turns guarantees that the rival's counterexploit of calling every single bluffcatcher will get a ton of money,because basically we are forced to bluff with every hand,and not just be "slightly overbluffing".

[@badvideo169]

but rarely happens - have berzerks who tink 22 is a great shoving hand and your AA lose to their 2 outer

[@darren4635]

too many people are playing GTO these days so because almost the entire field of players uses this strategy now it means the entire field has reached nash equilibrium and everybody is tying with each other (not winning or losing against each other ) but everybody is guaranteeing a diminishing return of around 10-20% in tournaments due to paying rake.

[@alexleach4002]

@4:39, i dont belive this is ture. There is not a better strategy to use but there are tons of equally good non gto straregts that get the exact same results. When you are playing GTO you are often making parts of their range indifferent. If you always call or aways fold etc with an indifferent part of your range vs a GTO player you will have the exact same results. So deviating from GTO in this case does not hurt you (or help you). There are deviations you could make that hurt you but many do not.

[@GTOWizard]

Yes, we addressed this at the end of the video, 10:30

[@Wppsamsung2024]

@01:30 isnt it more precise to say GTO is more minimising loss than maximising profit?

[@Sejdr]

The e-book is great, thanks!

[@modeob88]

Can you expand on "no strategy is unexploitable on multway pot" i dont see clearly why....

[@leagueofshen7693]

An easy example can be seen preflop. You are at a 9 handed table in the BB. The other 7 players are nits who only play AA. Knowing this, UTG opens with the range that he would open from the BN. If you follow a theory chart, you are exploited by this situation because UTG gets to open a wide range, while you are stuck folding 80%+ of the time. This is an extreme example of a real life situation. Imagine there is a maniac UTG and nits behind him, with you in the BB. You cannot follow charts to win here, you have to adapt.

[@TheTroy8]

​@leagueofshen7693 he said multiway pots, as in postflop with multiple people. Preflop is not that.

[@DoubleBassX2]

@@leagueofshen7693 Let me take a guess at this, let's say there is a 3-way pot postflop, pick a configuration any configuration. Let's say Player-A acts first and wants to exploit Player-B. They reach equilibrium with Player-B and then suddenly Player-C has room to deny one of the players equity (probably the player in the middle) If Player-B tries to adjust to this new dynamic where Player-C is adjusting, then it reopens Player-B to being exploited by Player-A all over again. I'm probably incomplete or entirely wrong about this and this is only a guess.

[@DottMySaviour]

Maybe the phrasing is weird, but I think what Tombos meant was that in non-heads-up, no strategy guarantees you won't lose (assuming no rake). The short reason is that collusion is possible. I'm not going to give a long and complicated explanation but you can look up implicit and explicit collusion, look into Bill Chen's Mathematics of Poker. An example is the bottom of the RFI range in non-heads-up preflop is actually -EV if there are loose flat callers behind. Both the loose flat caller and Hero would lose EV (to other players who are still in the pot). I call this EV Kamikaze and it gets amplified in tournaments where I call it ICM Kamikaze.

[@GTOWizard]

This applies to preflop and postflop. Nash Equilibrium says: No player can gain by a **unilateral** change of strategy if the strategies of the others remain unchanged. Note the word unilateral. Two or more players can simultaneously change their strategies and decrease a GTO player's EV. Here's an example. You open a GTO range UTG, and BTN flats a bit too wide, and the blinds are too passive and don't squeeze much. This decreases the EV of the bottom of UTG's range and transfers it to the BTN. The threat of the blinds squeezing is the only thing preventing BTN from flatting wider. If they ignore that threat, you lose money UTG.

[@513morris]

Tombos21 makes some of the best content. We should train AI on his videos.

[@euricojunior9817]

Amazing content 🔥 🔥 🔥

[@maxreach]

"If everybody is playing GTO they've already made as much money as they can In the spot". And that amount of money is equal to 0.

[@H.Annie7]

yes. Cant believe people dont talk about this. Actually if everyone plays GTO or very close to GTO, only the house could win due to rake and everyone would slowly lose buy ins.

[@maxreach]

@@H.Annie7 That's why you need a fish at the table who loses enough to offset a rake.

[@pokerboy72]

Use GTO in tournaments i guess

[@SamFlynn-m6w]

It’s impossible for a human to play perfect gto

[@rjw19]

Assuming everyone play perfect GTO. The local drunks playing 2/5 at your casino don’t.

[@ZiyaB3ast]

So heads up poker is technically solved. That's wild

[@janarodriquez-p2r]

Is their any software out there that works with clubwpt?

[@ncannavino11]

Great video yet again.... but yeah lemme know when there's a sale for those white hoodies on your website 😅

[@Lazepay]

the first 6 minutes was extremely hard to get through..

[@Lazepay]

then he goes on to show us a heads up game for GTO, barely anyone is playing heads up .

[@mikemakarevich]

Must give extra credits not only for the info in the video, but also for the images. Thanks

[@boop7441]

genuinely feel like this video is way too in between technical enough that it keeps people who already understand game theory engaged and too technical that people who have no idea what game theory is will be confused. for example: "We use software called solvers. solvers are basically EV-maximizing algorithms. That is to say, given a set of strategies it knows how much money every hand will make in every spot in every decision point" avoiding the fact that that's wrong (it knows the average amount of "money every hand is gonna make...") here's what goes through the mind of someone who understands game theory watching the video (again, ignoring the inaccuracy) "We use software called solvers" so... similar to chess? got it. i might be more interested in the inner workings but id like to learn the basics here "solvers are EV-maximising algorithms" I inferred that yea. "which means that..." well i already know what it means. Okay and i understand that this video is made for someone who has no background knowledge in game theory. alright then, so lets go back to each line and see what a person without background knowledge thinks. "we use software called solvers" well... what does a solver do? i get that it solves but like... how and what exactly "solvers are ev-maximising algorithms" oh great theyre gonna explain what a solver is! oh. okay so whats an ev-maximising algorithm "which means that..." okay so youve told me that it knows how much money every hand makes in every spot but... why? and how? i still dont get it. does it predict my opponent's hands? what's going on?

[@dw5551]

Seems like common sense most of it. I think the skills isn't so much playing gto but understanding combos vs pot odds when making defensive decisions and basing exploitive plays on live reads and player knowledge.

[@josyvan7680]

wait a moment tho -11:21 if the ev is 0.34 with 89o in the BB we gain 0.34bb/100 not 34bb/100 right??? cause then 89o would be a monster ??

[@GTOWizard]

0.34 bb per hand, 34 bb per 100 hands To put that into perspective, the pot is 6bb. So a medium-strength hand that wins half the pot on average, would have an EV of 3bb/hand, or 300bb/100

[@josyvan7680]

ah okay my bad i actually get it now @@GTOWizard thanks for the explainer :)

[@spiritkid9109]

So to reverse this - folding here loses 34bb/100? Sounds like a huge mistake to me to fold, but I also don't know how you win the pot often enough from this spot to make it make sense, it feels pretty loose. I guess it's a small bet, wide open ranges and position, so it's a marginal call. But it does feel like something is off when you can say it's a 34bb/100 swing for folding something marginal.

[@gabrielaugusto5704]

​@@spiritkid9109 folding is always ev = 0, that's why sometimes is better to fold than call/raise, because doing so would be an ev negative play. The moment you put money in the pot it is no longer yours.

[@spiritkid9109]

@@gabrielaugusto5704 that sounds entirely unrelated to my question, why is folding 34bb/100 worse than calling with what looks like air

[@Ovechkin8484]

Doesn’t a mixed strategy have equal EV for all actions? Why does calling have slightly higher EV than raising in the 98 example?

[@GTOWizard]

That's just noise in the solution. If it were solved to perfect accuracy, every mixed action would have the same EV

[@LinusK500]

"A GTO strategy will always outperform an imbalanced strategy, heads-up." It seems like what this suggests is you should avoid playing against computers. On the other hand, when you're playing against humans, you're always leaving money on the table, when you don't adapt to what they're doing. For example, in the heads-up game vs. the nit, GTO will continue losing the same amount of money vs. AA. An adaptive player will lose less and less, since he'll stop calling the nit's 3-bets.

[@DoubleBassX2]

Wait, you're telling me that loosely-based and barely useful sparks of insight that come _only after we see our cards,_ is not a strategy?

[@alexatedw]

Seems exploitative is the best strategy while understanding Gto

[@nikolaykomissarenko7822]

Need to have a base line in order to make exploitative decisions, that baseline is GTO.

[@alexatedw]

@@nikolaykomissarenko7822 no not really. The low stakes, people aren’t playing gto. So it doesn’t make sense to waste time learning it

[@ewallt]

In Nash’s paper, n player games have a Nash equilibrium, for n players games of a certain type. So given any strategy is exploitable in poker in multi-way play, it must be the case that this isn’t the type of n player game where the Nash equilibrium applies. I’m a bit curious as to how he defined this. Perhaps n player games where your strategy is unexploitable by collusion. I wonder of what an example of such a game is.

[@GTOWizard]

NE exists in discrete multiway games, however the strategy is not guaranteed to be unexploitable.

[@ewallt]

@@GTOWizard NE is the idea that no individual player is incentivized to deviate from their initial strategy given they know the strategies of all the other players, leading the game to an optimal result, as I understand it. If it’s possible to be exploited, then that seems like there could be incentive to alter one’s strategy. For example, in a final table tournament with multiple pay outs, your normal strategy would be to avoid confrontation in border cases since your equity increases when other stacks get involved. However, if others are colluding against you, you might be incentivized to take more aggressive action against a smaller stack to make sure they’re eliminated before you are, so given you can’t fight for a higher place, because of the collusion, at least you can do better than some below you. If there’s incentive for you to alter your strategy, then there must not have been an NE to start with. What am I missing here? Did I incorrectly define NE? Or do I have some misunderstanding of the implications of it? Thx for your response!

[@GaliReax]

Big question though: If GTO is the best possible way to play against human opponents, as the video states, why is it that there has not been a single profitable GTO bot? If you put a GTO bot on a table with a decent player, the player will be printing money. So the conclusion of the video doesn't make any sense. I might be completely wrong here, but what I have learned prior to this video was that GTO simply means that if you were to play GTO itself, you would break even. The moment GTO plays against a good human, it loses money. Is this inaccurate? If so, why are there no profitable GTO bots? Just curious, thanks.

[@torus5936]

how do you know there has not been profitable bots? That's illegal at online tables btw

[@GaliReax]

@@torus5936 There are plenty of bots on online tables even though they are illegal, it does happen. The general consensus amongst the regular players is that those bots are not profitable and can easily be exploited by them because of the simple fact that they follow a strict GTO strategy. So for example just changing the bet sizing will change the AI/Solver/GTO strategy, whatever you wanna call, where if you just go bigger you will push the GTO into a clear fold 😂 Obviously this is oversimplified, but the fact of the matter is, is that bots are not profitable against regs. And this video says they should be.

[@torus5936]

@@GaliReax didn't knew that, thanks for the information

[@GaliReax]

@@torus5936 I might be completely wrong buddy, so take my comments with a grain of salt. This is just what I have heard. Hope @GTOWizard can give us their thoughts on this dilemma

[@GTOWizard]

GaliReax, your assumptions are faulty. There have been plenty of winning bots, (see Pluribus, Supremus, DeepStack, ReBel, etc). Many of those were tested by researchers against top-level pros. If you pit a human player against a GTO bot, the bot will always win in the long run. Most of the bots online are not GTO, they are weak bots programmed to play a certain strategy, but nowhere near a true GTO strategy. Where humans have the advantage is their ability to exploit weaker players. GTO bots don't do this.

[@datd14]

More merch please

[@qsdailydose8970]

Great video

[@angelopaparazzi3484]

Great video although not a fan of the AI backgrounds tbh

[@lightknightgames]

That is not a nash equillibrium, it is a local equillibrium.

[@Joe_C.]

Great info... Now I just need to to find a tournament full of perfect opponents!

[@MageAtYou]

id recommend other professional "poker guides" than this one. Hes explaining basic things that others do free or cheaper

[@GTOWizard]

This video is free. I didn't realize it was possible to be cheaper than free..?

[@nikolaykomissarenko7822]

Yeah what are you talking about, this video in on KZbin, so its free, you just watched it.

[@thomasmatthews80]

I love all the GTO naysayers on here. Absolutely fine. Keep misunderstanding and losing online. That’s helpful 😂😊

[@davidboyd374]

GTO. Where i play a. 2/3 rainbow beats AA. So forget GTO.... 😂😂🙉🙈🙊

[@akur3578]

Yes it does make more potential money because you have the best hand in the game and you can exploit, no?... I do not get why the answer to the 3-betting question is no.

[@GTOWizard]

It seems you may have misunderstood the example. Firstly, what happens the other 99.5% of the time when BB is NOT dealt AA? Secondly, AA doesn't make more money despite being the only hand in BB's 3-bet range, because the player in position hasn't changed their strategy (in this thought experiment).

[@brunoferreira8558]

It's simple, if you need a software that tells what to do, you're not a player, my grandma could do that.

[@thomasmatthews80]

lol good luck at the tables if you don’t want to improve

[@paulpena5040]

It does NOT perform well against Nits, in fact clearly -ev. Since NIts will have IT 99% of the time any bluff/call/raise ratios suggested by GTO will be wildly out of balance. GTo demands that your opponent are attempting to play optimally themselves.

[@GTOWizard]

GTO does not require your opponent's to play GTO. Nits are not dealt better hands than any other player. We recommend watching the video, specifically the example starting at 4:10, to understand why.

[@darren4635]

11:30 This is all hyperbole because he hasn't mentioned anything about the price of the bet, call or the raise.

[@vincenzofranchelli2201]

if everyone is GTO poker is a -EV game like blackjack

[@akur3578]

I do not get it... too complicated, I do not get what raise to "10" is, why does it make the same amount of money, when it obviously says "12,9"... I just, don't, get it... Can nobody explain it for dummys (non natives?)

[@GTOWizard]

"Raise 10" means raising to 10 big blinds (bb). 5:51 "12.9" is their expected value with AA. It means when BB holds AA, they expect to make 12.9bb in on average throughout this hand. You can check out our guide to learn how to read a solver: help.gtowizard.com/study-mode/ We also offer free 1-on-1 training for premium members.

[@alexleach4002]

@8:35 overstated and not accurate "The counter exploit Always gains exponentially more than the initial exploit." If someone is way over bluffing in a spot their range can not support then you can easily over call. If they counter it and never bluff they do get called when they have value but their range does not have enough value to take advantage of your over calling. Your original is worth way more than their counter in this case.

[@GTOWizard]

This would have to be an extreme example where they have far more bluffs than value bets. What I stated is true in the vast majority of cases. But I take your point, this is a rule of thumb, not a law of game theory.

[@camilotm]

I think that if someone is overbluffing (regardless of how much ) you start overcalling with every bluffcatcher ,the result in terms of ev could range from small (if rival is not overbluffing that much) to a lot (if rival is overbluffing by a lot). So in the counterexploit scenario ,if you never bluff and start only valuebetting,you are garanteed that your rival will call with every possible bluff catcher(cause that was his first exploit),this in turns gives you a lot of ev with your value range and also as a part of the exploit you would expand it to the point of going super thin for value.

[@Actaeon2nd]

Call 97% of the time with an inside straight draw? Sounds like a formula to lose your stack real quick. GTO schme ti Yo. I'll pass on GTO.

[@dsrrellgriffith1161]

blah blah blah,,,GTO is nothing, just play your cards and the opponent,,,,,I am 67 years old, playing 30 years on and off,,,,,I do very well, i am tight aggressive. But i play my opponent or opponents,,,,I see so many young players on their phones texting or playing online games while at the table, there is so much information u can read at the table. GTO players just use variables and other garbage,,,,,i cash a lot in the WSOP,,,,,Just started to play full time tournaments, not cash.....

[@andreeeee373]

You are poker killers

[@playinragz8183]

Poker is random so unless you play a million hands the same way you’re wasting time.

[@lawrence8427]

so how do you explain seeing the same guys final tabling the biggest tournaments year on year?

[@playinragz8183]

@@lawrence8427 because they buy in over and over and over. That’s why you see Shawn Deeb he’s doing just that. WSOP in NYS RECENTLY had one buy in main event. No “pros” at that final table.

[@metalhead1987]

Playing gto 🤣

[@H.Annie7]

If this video is targeted towards someone with little prior GTO or Poker knowledge to buy your product, you did poorly.

[@dwainfisher4119]

They do just fine, players that want to win naturally go this way, it is the foundation for success in poker.

[@H.Annie7]

@@dwainfisher4119 They could do better. They have a bunch of video with low view counts. Do you know why?

[@H.Annie7]

@@dwainfisher4119 No they don't. Is this video targeted towards pro or new players? New. And they did a terrible job introducing stuff for new players. Look at their channel. Most videos have low view counts.

[@ncannavino11]

What questions arose?

[@GTOWizard]

Can you offer constructive feedback?

[@parafroome]

It is shame to see that even GTO wizards dont understand what GTO poker is ?its just a scam!!!

[@GTOWizard]

What do you think GTO is?

[@Gibraltariano]

@@GTOWizardIt is a non GTO strategy to get embroiled in arguments in KZbin comments section.

[@IamSamSammIam]

@@GTOWizard GTOWizard just got exploited by replying to the original comment LOL

[@ricex18]

Great video