GTO vs explotive play

[hef]

I’ve been grinding both live and online lately, and I keep running into the same dilemma:


When playing against recreational players (“fish”), is it better to stick close to GTO ranges and strategies, or should we throw the book out the window and exploit them as much as possible?


I know GTO protects you from being exploited in the long run, but against players who clearly don’t think about balance or ranges, part of me feels like I’m leaving money on the table if I don’t exploit their mistakes hard.

• Do you stick to GTO vs fish, or go full exploit?
• Any examples where GTO actually outperformed exploitative adjustments against weak players?
• How do you measure when you’ve gone too far from GTO and risk being exploited yourself?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts — especially from players who’ve tracked results in both approaches.

 

[dannystanks]

Learning GTO is important to me when playing live. It helps determine who is deviating from GTO and how badly they are deviating from it. Then just go full exploit mode every chance you get against these bad players. Against the good GTO players we still have to find spots to exploit, they are there, so be patient and find those spots.

 

[pentazepam]

If you have to play GTO you are at the wrong tables.

 

[Marshmalo1994]

GTO is ok to play against gto players, if not, you need to adjust your ranges, using gto game as a base.

 

[renisundernet]

What happens when suddenly weak players turn into good players suddenly...how did tgis happen, did they get good cards or we misread their strategy? This is something I think or try to understand as fast during early games as possible.

 

[eetenor]

I’ve been grinding both live and online lately, and I keep running into the same dilemma:


When playing against recreational players (“fish”), is it better to stick close to GTO ranges and strategies, or should we throw the book out the window and exploit them as much as possible?


I know GTO protects you from being exploited in the long run, but against players who clearly don’t think about balance or ranges, part of me feels like I’m leaving money on the table if I don’t exploit their mistakes hard.

• Do you stick to GTO vs fish, or go full exploit?
• Any examples where GTO actually outperformed exploitative adjustments against weak players?
• How do you measure when you’ve gone too far from GTO and risk being exploited yourself?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts — especially from players who’ve tracked results in both approaches.

Way more ROI in Exploit play than basic GTO vs weak players-- If a player will call any bet size why would we not shove all our value hands no matter the size of the pot?
If a player over folds why would we not bluff often.
etc etc etc

 

[primrose]

GTO is grossly overrated. A surprising number of the winning pros that I play with live are shooting themselves into the foot by playing GTO when they shouldn't. The biggest winner at 2/4 who is there every day, has an edge against just about anyone, he does things sometimes that are just obviously not profitable, like cold 4betting someone who has never 3bet before with A5s. He doesn't talk about hands a lot, but when he does, the way he speaks always shows that he's thinking about his entire range, like "I can't overbet bluff here because I don't really have any value hands that I would overbet..."

You should not play GTO against weak players, ever, and you should always table select such that most of your opponents are weak, so really mastering GTO just isn't important. On the list of things that I think would improve my hourly wage, "learn better GTO" is pretty far down. Sure if I'm playing a hand against the player I just talked about above, then I'm trying to play GTO, and for those cases knowing GTO better would give me an edge. And ditto for 2-3 other players. But it's really not a big factor.

Online it's probably a different story, tougher field, you probably have to know GTO there. Idk. online poker is pretty dead in germany anyway so from my PoV it's kinda whatever.

 

[Noodeloo]

Game theory optimal is developing a strategy that is unexploitable but that doesnt always mean its profitable - only experience applying GTO as a basis for a solid strategy and learning when to deviate and who to deviate against will make GTO profitable. The cards we get dealt are random but how we play them is certainly not. Poker is a really hard game and thats why i love it.