GTO. If you’ve been around poker long enough this is a term you’ve probably heard at the table.
It’s usually thrown around by weaker players looking to sound smart, but what does it mean? What does GTO – or Game Theory Optimal – poker look like? I want to dispel some fallacies about GTO poker and give my interpretation of how and what playing a GTO strategy looks like in reality.
What is GTO Poker?
GTO Poker refers to a theoretical strategy in poker where a player makes decisions that are perfectly balanced and unexploitable over the long run. The concept is grounded in game theory, a mathematical study of strategic interactions where players make decisions to maximize their outcomes while considering the actions of others.
One of the hallmarks of GTO play is the indifference principle, that is the concept that their opponents will constantly have decisions where their expected value (or EV) remains neutral regardless of their decision.
This is achieved by playing balanced strategies and specifically in poker, that involves a lot of mixed strategies. Mixed strategies are when players will make different choices at the same decision point certain percentages of the time. While very easy to achieve for computer systems, this is one of the biggest challenges human players face in achieving GTO play.
Nonetheless, the idea of being frequently indifferent to your decisions in a poker game is a scary idea to consider. Imagine playing against an opponent where it does not matter if you call or fold because there is no better choice. But don’t despair! There are a number of challenges in human players properly implementing a GTO strategy in-game.
Why is GTO Poker So Difficult To Master?
Even the top players in the world struggle in executing the correct strategy repeatedly over time. This stems from the pure depth and complexity of the game of poker, and the myriad of different scenarios a player can find themselves in.
Hand class, position, stack depth, stack to pot ratio – these are all factors that are contributing to building a GTO strategy for a certain situation. Trying to build these GTO models on the fly while under the pressure of playing a live poker game (and potentially a shot clock!) is no small feat.
This is why we find top players studying computer models so frequently away from the felt. Understanding these models, finding parallels between different spots, and simplifying situations is essential to human players, as recalling how a scenario should work in the world of GTO is much easier than solving it in real-time.
Adaptability in Game Theory Optimal Poker
Another interesting challenge with executing a GTO strategy is adaptability. GTO strategies are not designed to maximize profit against weaker players, they are optimized to avoid losing when playing against other highly skilled or GTO-oriented opponents.
While the strategy will naturally beat weaker opponents, it is not geared to adapt and exploit poker players’ mistakes the fullest. In lower stakes games or games full of weak players, following a GTO strategy will often not be the way to win the most money.
So while a perfectly executed GTO strategy would be unbeatable by definition, unless you are playing the highest stakes games in the world I would not worry about your actual opponents pulling it off in your games. I recommend studying GTO strategies off the felt to see and understand how situations “should” work theoretically, and then making adaptations and adjustments in-game dependent on how your opponents are playing.
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