I'm here because I know very little about GTO play, so please keep the words small. 
If I play [close to] GTO versus someone else who plays as well as me, aren't we then just wasting our time and blinds to the rake? Or is that not possible?
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Technical question, when I 'tune in' to the coaching I only get a quick flash of a window that closes instantly with firefox, and when I use IE it only shows an empty white window... any clue?
NVM caused by adblock.
Could you give one or two practical examples of using multiple opening sizes from a given position (MP, let's say)?
So for the GTO question where winner gets a book (I believe this is the right place to post it, let me know if I'm wrong) I'd like to ask the following:
When should you consider overbetting, and why do overbets rarely happen on the flop?
As for the rest of the questions people have already posted, I'll try to start answering them by tomorrow. If anyone else has additional questions that weren't answered today they can post them here as well and I'll try to help.
-Matt
Originally posted by rdmnick
6max - Open Limping SB
Do you plan on doing any content on how to construct a balanced/optimal limping range in SB vs BB in 6max?
*There has been a lot of talk/discussions about these ranges
*Several highly respected players use them, and clearly they're sound in theory.6max - Minraising UTG/MP/CO
I know some players advocate min-raising from all positions, and a lot of succesful players seem to be adopting this strategy. Question is, is this sound in theory?
*We do invest less to win the same amount preflop or see a hand to showdown. (Likely this could improve our EV - but I guess it might be tough to quantify for the early positions)
*Players should be inclined to defend more hands since their pot-odds improves, but given UTG's chance of stealing succesfully and the tiny requirement from BB to defend enough, does this really affect us?Closing the action
Would you consider flatting a few premiums for the sake of balance in BB vs BTN despite closing the action?
Some state that in GTO we should in theory flat a few premiums such as AA and KK, whereas some state that we shouldn't because our range (although wide) in BB vs BTN will be dynamic and robust enough for premiums not to play a high enough of a role when it comes to postflop for us to have an incentive to flat. The few boards where such premiums actually would matter (low boards) are not frequent enough to argue them ever to be a flat.I realise I am not a gold member at pokerstrategy and thus wont be able to take part of this, but if anyone find these questions interresting enough you could just quote me and hopefully there will be some answers.
Just quoting to make sure those get answered
Originally posted by MatthewJanda
When should you consider overbetting, and why do overbets rarely happen on the flop?
-Matt
If it was meant to be for value:
1. If we are deep, to get stacks in on T/R
2. To maximize fold equity if we are bluffing/semi-bluffing
3. To make tight players fold their better hands, if they are scared of money
In multiway pots to provide more fold equity, since if one/two players call our bet, the others have better price to call, as well
4. To make "draw chasers" pay more
5. To compensate lack of position when needed
6. To prevent aggressive players and frequent raisers to raise us
7. To compensate stack to pot ratio in limped pots and also common today 2x before flop
8. To give illusion to short - mid stackers that they have fold equity if they shove
9. To balance our strong-weak bets
They happen rarely on the flop, because 2 more streets are comming, and pot is still small (if not insanely deep, nor in 3bet/4bet pot)
Originally posted by MatthewJanda
When should you consider overbetting, and why do overbets rarely happen on the flop?
-Matt
When our opponents range does not have nut hands and our range can have them.
Rarely happens on the flop because even tho his range is reasonably capped (cant have nuts on the flop and we can), there are still two more cards to come and some of his holdings might improve to the nuts.
Originally posted by MatthewJanda
When should you consider overbetting, and why do overbets rarely happen on the flop?
I'd say in spots where you have a range of nuts/air so you could win the pot more often instead of losing it since you can have more air combos in overbetting range and not be exploitable than if you were to bet let's say a pot sized bet.
For example, if you make a PSB on the river with range of nuts/air then only 33,3% of your bets can be bluffs in order to be balanced. But if you make it 2x the pot now 40% of your betting range can be air which allows you to win the pot more often.
As to why overbets rarely happen on the flop, firstly ranges are almost never capped at bluffcachers and we don't have a range of immortal nuts/air.
Secondly if we were to overbet with nuts/air part of our range and then bet 2/3 of the pot with medium strength hands that would open us up to getting exploited, so if we were to construct and overbetting range on the flop we'd have to randomize the amount of time we do this with nuts so to leave some monsters in our 2/3 pot betting range. Which will mean that we'll overbet very rarely, and obv it's gonna be super hard to randomize for us, non bots.
Originally posted by MatthewJanda
When should you consider overbetting, and why do overbets rarely happen on the flop?
-Matt
I'll try with a short answer: We should consider overbetting when villain's range is capped, generally to hands weaker than sets. Ranges are rarely capped on the flop because most of the time players can have at least a few combos of sets and/or two-pair.
Originally posted by z1pz0r
Originally posted by rdmnick
6max - Open Limping SB
Do you plan on doing any content on how to construct a balanced/optimal limping range in SB vs BB in 6max?
*There has been a lot of talk/discussions about these ranges
*Several highly respected players use them, and clearly they're sound in theory.6max - Minraising UTG/MP/CO
I know some players advocate min-raising from all positions, and a lot of succesful players seem to be adopting this strategy. Question is, is this sound in theory?
*We do invest less to win the same amount preflop or see a hand to showdown. (Likely this could improve our EV - but I guess it might be tough to quantify for the early positions)
*Players should be inclined to defend more hands since their pot-odds improves, but given UTG's chance of stealing succesfully and the tiny requirement from BB to defend enough, does this really affect us?Closing the action
Would you consider flatting a few premiums for the sake of balance in BB vs BTN despite closing the action?
Some state that in GTO we should in theory flat a few premiums such as AA and KK, whereas some state that we shouldn't because our range (although wide) in BB vs BTN will be dynamic and robust enough for premiums not to play a high enough of a role when it comes to postflop for us to have an incentive to flat. The few boards where such premiums actually would matter (low boards) are not frequent enough to argue them ever to be a flat.I realise I am not a gold member at pokerstrategy and thus wont be able to take part of this, but if anyone find these questions interresting enough you could just quote me and hopefully there will be some answers.
Just quoting to make sure those get answered
They were answered buddy.
Originally posted by MatthewJanda
When should you consider overbetting, and why do overbets rarely happen on the flop?
we need polarized range for overbet and it means all opponent's range have to be in the middle and to be drawing dead against our nut part/ and we rarely have realy that polarized range on the flop (as well as preflop), i'd say never, because ranges are often wide and to many cards for improvement to come.
Originally posted by rdmnick
6max - Open Limping SB
Do you plan on doing any content on how to construct a balanced/optimal limping range in SB vs BB in 6max?
*There has been a lot of talk/discussions about these ranges
*Several highly respected players use them, and clearly they're sound in theory.
In theory, you would have several different raise first in sizings from every position, and each range would be balanced. So, there's no reason why you can't have one range that min raises UTG, one that opens to 2.25BB, one that opens to 2.5BB, etc. An optimal player would do this.
In reality, this is way to difficult to implement and no one knows what optimal pre-flop ranges are. Because of that, most people just pick one sizing for each position. I think the argument for mostly limping from the SB seems reasonable, but it's not possible to say if this is optimal. I personally prefer to raise bigger than min raise from the other positions, as I think the min-raise lets the big blind see a flop a bit too cheaply, though I'm not sure if 2BB or 2.5BB is better if you always have to pick one sizing.
6max - Minraising UTG/MP/CO
I know some players advocate min-raising from all positions, and a lot of succesful players seem to be adopting this strategy. Question is, is this sound in theory?
*We do invest less to win the same amount preflop or see a hand to showdown. (Likely this could improve our EV - but I guess it might be tough to quantify for the early positions)
*Players should be inclined to defend more hands since their pot-odds improves, but given UTG's chance of stealing succesfully and the tiny requirement from BB to defend enough, does this really affect us?
See above. No one knows if opening 2.5BB is better than opening 2BB when UTG. If I had to pick one, I'd pick 2.5BB, but it's just a guess and in reality an optimal player would probably be doing both. And remember, a hand can go into two opening ranges (so maybe he opens 2BB with AA sometimes, and 2.5BB with AA sometimes).
Closing the action
Would you consider flatting a few premiums for the sake of balance in BB vs BTN despite closing the action?
Some state that in GTO we should in theory flat a few premiums such as AA and KK, whereas some state that we shouldn't because our range (although wide) in BB vs BTN will be dynamic and robust enough for premiums not to play a high enough of a role when it comes to postflop for us to have an incentive to flat. The few boards where such premiums actually would matter (low boards) are not frequent enough to argue them ever to be a flat.I realise I am not a gold member at pokerstrategy and thus wont be able to take part of this, but if anyone find these questions interresting enough you could just quote me and hopefully there will be some answers.
You cannot ever take any line that isn't the most +EV line in theory. So, although it's tempting to say "Well I'm going to flat some premium hands in the BB against a button open to balance my range," this can't be GTO correct unless it's more +EV than raising. And here's the problem with flatting in the big blind against a button open.
1) Since you're closing the betting, no one is left to act who can squeeze. Your opponent is guaranteed to see a flop when you call, and you kept the pot small.
2) Stacks will be very deep relative to the size of the pot, which makes position more valuable.
3) Each player will go from having access from two cards to five cards when they see the flop. This means you'll usually make some sets/two pairs/etc even if you call with a pretty weak hand in the big blind.
For example, if the flop comes Kh 8s 7c, you'll probably make either 18 or 27 two pair combinations. Does having AA in our range really do anything that amazing? And for the boards where it would be amazing, like 722, these board textures are usually so rare that it's not too important if our range is very weak.
There's more arguments for why flatting isn't good, but those are the main arguments I would make. That doesn't prove you shouldn't flat any premium hands against a button open, but I think you'd need a really strong argument for it (which I don't think exist) so I would recommend never slowplaying strong hands BB vs button.
Originally posted by barbeysize
what proportion of exoitable vs somewhat optimal play should we have in our overall strategy on low stakes (100-200nl) for both preflop and postflop (maybe even different for each street)?in what kind of spots we should tend to play by gto? some board textures (Jhigh monotone?
), action (3bet pot oop with iniciative?) or frequency (flop cbet or river raise)?
ps: so how exactly you're going to distribute this 3 books?
sorry if it is unappropriate to post this here.
If you read the Ben Sulsky foreword, he's a pretty big advocate on needing a really good reason to deviate from optimal play. That's because optimal play is just awesome and crushes pretty much everything. So if you see my above post, if you're going to argue you should flat AK in the big blind vs a button open, you need a REALLY good argument for why this exploits and crushes your opponent since 3-betting is just so effective.
Another example would be the CO vs Button 8h 6h 3c flop (or something similar) situation I talked about earlier when discussing GTO play with Patrick. You need a good reason to not be check-raising 66 on that flop, even though most people bet it (and because betting is profitable, few people are going to realize check-raising is more profitable without having really put a lot of work into their game).
The times I would deviate from optimal are spots where you know your opponent is clearly unbalanced, and the hand you're holding won't matter much. So, it's ok to fold too much or too little on the river in spots where your opponent is unbalanced and your removal effect isn't a big deal. It also is ok to fold a bit too much to flop raises against opponents who don't realize how aggressively they should be raising on the flop (since you can have a lot of bluffs in your range at this point). But without a really good read, playing close to GTO will probably be best.
Originally posted by JCSeerup
Don't mix up your play, if you were playing perfect GTO you could tell your opponent what you were going to do and at least be breakeven and make profit every time he make a mistake.
I'm not sure exactly what you meant by this, but just want to point out that it's GTO to often take different lines with the same hand, which may be confusing some people. So, let's say MP opens and we're in the button, we probably want to 3-bet AKo sometimes and call with it sometimes. If we always 3-bet, it's probably pretty exploitable, and if we never 3-bet it, it's probably pretty exploitable.
Against a GTO opponent who never adjust his strategy, it won't matter if we 3-bet or call, since they have the same EV. Against a nemesis type opponent who can adjust perfectly to what we do, he'll probably be able to exploit us pretty easily if he knows we always or never 3-bet AK. For example, if we always 3-bet AK, then our nemesis opponent will know if we call pre-flop we'll be pretty weak on K high flops and he'll put a ton of pressure on us (which then encourages us to call AK pre-flop, which is now more profitable than 3-betting).
Originally posted by Schnitzelfisch
Hi, I've watched your videos on "optimal preflop ranges", constructing 3betting/flatting ranges for SB vs BTN, BB vs BTN, etc. and constructed the majority of the preflop ranges.I would like to ask you what do you think would be the relevant next subjects to learn (from your videos) for the postflop play? I have a very basic knowledge of NL, don't know exactly where to start.
Thanks!
-SF
I'd really just go for the book. I know that makes it sound like I'm just trying to sell copies, but the advantage of the book is I can explain everything in a step by step manner which I can't do in hour long videos.
If you are particularly interested in CardRunners videos, I'd go for flopzilla based videos which show how I go about creating ranges after randomly generating flops. Those are really useful for seeing how ranges actually get constructed, and it prevents me from just illustrating concepts with easier examples (which is always tempting to do 
).
Sweet smiles you guys got on this site btw.
Originally posted by JCSeerup
GTO is not necessarily the most +EV play in every situation, it's just the most optimal countermove from a theoretical point. And in theory we should be 0EV playing GTO, because we build the strategy around opponents who plays optimal against us, and we will then be +EV everytime our opponents deviate from the optimal line. And to make our range balanced we should be 0EV vs the middle of opponents range, thats why an GTO graph will be breakeven SD-winings an profit in non-SD winnings.
A GTO player will never adjust his strategy to the opponent, and will be +EV against every non-optimal opponent.
A rule like "GTO should be 0EV against the middle of the opponent's range" does not exist, as it's pretty common for every single hand in the opponent's range to be +EV in some situations, much less the middle of the opponent's range. There's also no rule for if a GTO player should win in SD-winnings or non-SD, and against any reasonable player it'd probably crush them in both.
Originally posted by circe
Do you rather flat call or 3 bet 22 -TT from The Button versus unknown Players?
Depends on where the open came from and their opening size. I'd probably call them more often than not, sometimes folding 22-55.
Again though, it's quite possible (probably even likely) that some hands like 44 would be folds sometimes and calls sometimes from a GTO perspective. That's because there's so little difference in hand strength between 33 and 44. But if our opponent knew we always flatted 44 and folded 33 then he'd probably pay us off less on flops with a 4 when we flop a set than flops with a 3 if we flopped a set.
There's a much bigger difference between something like 88 and 44, where now 88 will win more likely as a pair and is more likely to be the higher set in set vs set battles.