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Windwalker on Hustler Casino Live?!?!?!?!?!? (4 Viewers)

TheDuke said:
Perhaps some of the learning may not be as formal as 1 on 1 coaching. He's now somewhat poker famous and will be rubbing elbows with some elite players. It might be some informal discussion over lunch/dinner/drinks about specific hands.
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Totally agree with this and to ad to this a bit, it could be informal discussions with players about life in general and their personal experiences on and off the felt.
One can learn a lot about how a player may play in certain situations just by listening to conversations they could be having with someone else at the table.

I haven’t gotten to watch much of the live feed when it has been streaming, maybe an hours worth over 3 episodes. In my personal view based on what I’ve seen, Andy is the guy playing the players more than anyone else sitting at that table. Garret to his credit makes some great reads but Andy is a much better player in my view.

As another member mentioned earlier in the thread, this game (despite the large stakes) doesn’t really play much different than a typical $2/$5 in a casino filled with your regular local nits. It’s tough to be a standout good player in any game like that no matter the stakes.
 
Budha said:
OK - I gotta ask this - lol.

GTO, I am not well versed in it, but understand it in concept at 100k feet. Here is my question. Isn’t GTO and exploitative strategies essentially what the old school pro’s (Brunson, Unger, and then early modern pros, Helmuth, etc) have been doing for years. Understand your players, their weaknesses, adjust your play accordingly. Understand odds, probability, and reading your opponents, etc, all honed over thousands of hours on the felt.

Is GTO pretty much “this” just wrapped in an “algorithm” that can be packaged & sold as a “model for play”.

It seems like GTO strategy is a math problem designed to optimize on-line play when you are playing in 3+ tables at a time and it allows you to optimize play averaged across a certain number of hands when you have to make quick decisions based on limited information.

In the end, how truly different or better is GTO from core and fundamental strategies found in Slansky’s Theory of a poker when playing live?

Disclaimer: I am no strategy pro by any stretch, I’m a “decent” casual player who at one time studied poker strategy fairly seriously - many years ago (hence reference to Slansky - lol)

I am truly curious as maybe I am missing something. This has bugged me for a while - lol.
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GTO for the vast majority of live players is going to be a waste of time, exploitative is where it's at

If you NEED GTO to compete at a table, the lineup probably fucking sucks and you're better off playing at a softer table
 
Budha said:
Here is my question. Isn’t GTO and exploitative strategies essentially what the old school pro’s (Brunson, Unger, and then early modern pros, Helmuth, etc) have been doing for years.
Understand your players, their weaknesses, adjust your play accordingly. Understand odds, probability, and reading your opponents, etc, all honed over thousands of hours on the felt.

Is GTO pretty much “this” just wrapped in an “algorithm” that can be packaged & sold as a “model for play”.
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Nope. Not even close.

GTO stands for "game theory optimal". What that means is that GTO is literally perfect play. In any situation there is a perfect play (or, usually, a perfect mix of plays i.e. randomly choose between raising and calling such that you raise 30% of the time and call 70% of the time), and in theory it's possible to know what that perfect play or perfect mix of plays is. In practice the math required to do so far exceeds what even a computer can do. Computers can closely approximate it, though, and humans can very, very loosely approximate it. What the old school pros do - or even modern pros - doesn't even come close to perfect play. No one even knew what perfect play was until computers started approximating it about five years ago.

Note that "perfect play" here is used in the game theory sense - the play that does the best against another player playing perfectly. If the other player plays anything other than perfect play, then you will always beat him. But if the other player is not perfect, then you can beat him even more with exploitative play; but exploitative play is itself not perfect, and so can be counter-exploited. Perfect play cannot be exploited.

Since no one can play perfectly (at best they can loosely approximate it), everyone can be exploited. To exploit imperfect play, you have to play imperfectly, which means you can be exploited. So in a sense this is sort of like what the old school pros do - look for weaknesses that can be exploited, and then exploit them. But studying GTO gives you a better understanding of what unexploitable play looks like and helps you better recognize what the exploitable weaknesses are and how to exploit them.

If you're really curious to learn more about this, you should repost your questions in the strategy forum.
 
All this GTO trying to play this way that way, you can try and play as perfect as you want, but at the end of the day even the fish win. Poker is lots of skill but also a game of luck.
 
Goldfish said:
All I know is I don’t understand any of the GTO stuff and I went to the meet up at @Seeking Alpha Social Club and won the main event holdem tourney ……… :unsure:
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Even heavy GTO advocates will tell you that it is not an EV-maximizing strategy. But holy shit, it's unsettling to play against a GTO bot.

I don't know if there's any place that lets you play against an actual bot for free, just to see what it's like. But it's worth seeing what happens when you turn computers loose with a set of goals and no preconceptions about the best way to get there. Sometimes the computers' results are very much in keeping with the way the game has been played for quite a while. Sometimes it's completely bonkers.
 
Goldfish said:
All I know is I don’t understand any of the GTO stuff and I went to the meet up at @Seeking Alpha Social Club and won the main event holdem tourney ……… :unsure:
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You played very well that day @Goldfish and it seemed that I do remember a K-9 hand against non other than @k9dr that seemed to set the tone for you the rest of the tournament. ;)
It was a pleasure playing against you almost the entire day. I think I got away with one against you but you caught me in another. :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: Great read on your part, bad timing sticking my hand back in the cookie jar for seconds.
I look forward to the next one.
 
Lil Tuna said:
You played very well that day @Goldfish and it seemed that I do remember a K-9 hand against non other than @k9dr that seemed to set the tone for you the rest of the tournament. ;)
It was a pleasure playing against you almost the entire day. I think I got away with one against you but you caught me in another. :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: Great read on your part, bad timing sticking my hand back in the cookie jar for seconds.
I look forward to the next one.
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I hate when people try to steal my cookies! I think nov 13th will be ur next opportunity ….. I plan to school the field in the lost art of mixed games. Hope to see u there!
 
CrazyEddie said:
Nope. Not even close.

GTO stands for "game theory optimal". What that means is that GTO is literally perfect play. In any situation there is a perfect play (or, usually, a perfect mix of plays i.e. randomly choose between raising and calling such that you raise 30% of the time and call 70% of the time), and in theory it's possible to know what that perfect play or perfect mix of plays is. In practice the math required to do so far exceeds what even a computer can do. Computers can closely approximate it, though, and humans can very, very loosely approximate it. What the old school pros do - or even modern pros - doesn't even come close to perfect play. No one even knew what perfect play was until computers started approximating it about five years ago.

Note that "perfect play" here is used in the game theory sense - the play that does the best against another player playing perfectly. If the other player plays anything other than perfect play, then you will always beat him. But if the other player is not perfect, then you can beat him even more with exploitative play; but exploitative play is itself not perfect, and so can be counter-exploited. Perfect play cannot be exploited.

Since no one can play perfectly (at best they can loosely approximate it), everyone can be exploited. To exploit imperfect play, you have to play imperfectly, which means you can be exploited. So in a sense this is sort of like what the old school pros do - look for weaknesses that can be exploited, and then exploit them. But studying GTO gives you a better understanding of what unexploitable play looks like and helps you better recognize what the exploitable weaknesses are and how to exploit them.

If you're really curious to learn more about this, you should repost your questions in the strategy forum.
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Yes, agree. That’s essentially what I meant by the “algorithm”. Just said it differently- lol. It’s basically a situational model based on the most likely statistical outcomes.

Game theory is applied fairly broadly now days. In my field, there is game theory based negotiation strategy. As a seasoned and experienced negotiator, I find it somewhat useful in a narrow set of circumstances, however 9 out of 10 times, the model is not telling me anything I didn’t already know or planned for with regards to negotiating very large corporate deals ($100M+).

In all honesty, I have found game theory negotiation strategy to be something firms like McKinsey came up with to sell as a “crutch” to companies that don’t have strong internal capabilities. The reality is for large complex negotiations, it can take 18+ months of planning, setting the stage, arranging the pieces, etc. This will always yield the best outcome. Most companies do not do this - lol.

Game theory negotiation strategy is a short cut when you hire a consultant to come in and help b/c the company dropped the ball, didn’t plan accordingly, and is now in an “oh shit moment” cause the supplier they are hand-cuffed too has them by the short hairs - lol.

As for poker, I can absolutely see GTO applied to online play when playing multiple tables and you have limited information, but still struggle see significant value over core fundamental poker strategy in live play.
 
Budha said:
OK - I gotta ask this - lol.

GTO, I am not well versed in it, but understand it in concept at 100k feet. Here is my question. Isn’t GTO and exploitative strategies essentially what the old school pro’s (Brunson, Unger, and then early modern pros, Helmuth, etc) have been doing for years.
Click to expand...

No
 
TheDonkeyKong said:
All this GTO trying to play this way that way, you can try and play as perfect as you want, but at the end of the day even the fish win. Poker is lots of skill but also a game of luck.
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That’s a complete misunderstanding of GTO.

GTO does not mean you would win every hand or every session. It means in the long run you won’t be beaten. You also might not make much money; it would depend on how much the fish deviate from GTO.

But GTO is a theory. No one on earth can play perfect GTO multi-way, even with a computer. It is all approximation.
 
theory of poker is a basic explanation of the underlying logic.

mathematics of poker by ankenman/chen is a more elaborate way to show you how to compute simple decisions.

the solvers are programs that perform an enormous number of simulations to refine and perfect an overall strategy against a theoretical player who is also refining/perfecting their overall strategy until it arrives at an equilibrium. it's an overall strategy for all hands you can be dealt where others can at best break even by playing the exact same overall strategy, and they will lose in proportion to how far they deviate from it.

that doesnt mean you can't do better than a gto solution in any given instance. if you knew that someone is calling down 100% of bluff catchers on the river for instance you would never bluff. but if you did choose to be a "gto robot" (or had no read on them), you still wouldn't lose overall to the person whose calling down 100%. your bluffs would show a loss, yes, but your value bets would win a lot more, and the net effect would be positive.

.... and it's because the hands they erroneously call with that a GTO bot would fold are folded because they include cards that at least slightly block your value or unblock your bluffs. which is to say, when they have the bluff catchers that a solver would fold but they chose to call with, you're incrementally more likely to have a value hand than a bluff.

when i say that jungle and dwan are gto players it doesnt mean that they always choose the solvers preferred decisions. obviously everyone makes adjustments ie: no one is going to try and run a huge bluff on mikki. all im saying is that they all know how to play like that, and will generally revert to it any time they're up against someone that they think is competent or that they have no functional reads on.
 
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Budha said:
Game theory is applied fairly broadly now days. In my field, there is game theory based negotiation strategy.
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IIRC the earliest serious applications of game theory were in Cold War nuclear strategy and negotiation. It only came to poker decades later.

The movie A Beautiful Mind is about the mathematician who pioneered game theory.

 
GTO pretty much informs a baseline strategy if you do not have additional information about the specific player you are in a headsup pot with. Even having general information about the population should help you deviate from baseline. And when i say informs, i mean that loosely because NO ONE plays GTO, so if you hear people talking GTO, they are usually fish. terms like balance, ranges, polarization - these are not GTO terms, just vernacular for fundamental poker strategy.

negotiation strategy is probably the best way of understanding GTO actually, and it is just the idea that with two rational actors, maybe even well seasoned negotiators, neither is going to deviate too much from optimal for fear of getting exploited. you would have to discover some serious flaws in your opponent before trying to go for a home run - i.e. they are not the tough seasoned negotiator you were worried about.

but the fact is, most people are terrible at poker. it's the boring thing about poker - you are making most profit from exploiting the same leaks over and over again, and in my games, these are in multiway pots. GTO is rendered pretty useless. however, as a student of the game, i want to know what the solvers say because i probably did not know how to exploit a strange play at the table, like last night when EP bet 400 into 600 pot into my AQ on a Q652 two heart board with 2000 eff behind and i folded and he had Qx of hearts. ( had the A of hearts) i can "wait for a better spot" but also, i would like to know how to not be exploited in case i have the leak of overfolding there. i know that i can't implement whatever the solver says in real time, since it will be a mix of calling/folding/jamming etc but still, reviewing what is GTO there is useful.

Andrew Brokos Play Optimal Poker books are really good and probably must reads IMO. mainly they apply to headsup pots in deep stack NLH. even these conditions don't come up that often in games i play in. (straddles cut the stacks down to < 150bb, 4-5 callers every pot, etc.) You would never throw out your winning tactics but it might help to find leaks in your own play.
 
of course it's meaningless in live games where 2/3rds of the table are horrible.

it's absolutely crucial in any online game beyond 1/2nl though.

if you look at datamined hands of the regs in these games (ie: roughly 5/6ths of the player base in a 6max zoom pool at $500z and beyond) you'll see their opening ranges, their opening sizes, their flop/turn/river sizing for different board textures.... everything basically is straight out of a solver.

that doesnt mean they're emulating it perfectly and you could exploit their mistakes if you studied their hand history data thoroughly, but knowing what a gto solution looks like does help to ensure that nobody is making those exploits against you.
 
Lil Tuna said:
I think your point of paying for some 1 on 1 training from a seasoned pro is a good one. The only problem I can see with this route is finding the right person for the job.
Some people may be great players when on the felt but don’t have the ability to teach or communicate their abilities to someone trying to learn.

Based on some personal experience, if I had the means to pay someone to teach me how to take my game to another level and they were willing to take me under their wing as a student, I think I would love to get into the poker mind of Ted Forrest.

I say this because this guy as a player has successfully played against the likes of billionaire Andy Beal, has 6 WSOP bracelets and is well versed in many disciplines of the game. In recent years I believe (based on what I’ve read) he has had some financial and legal issues. I don’t know if the opportunity for a guy like Ted to teach a person with the means to pay for (what I would imagine to be expensive) lessons or services, would even entice him to do so.

FWIW, the guy has the ability to be a top notch player in any game he finds himself in. I’ve had the opportunity to play against him in some of the Borgata Open tournaments in Atlantic City over the years. It’s also not uncommon to see him sitting at a $2/$5 table on occasion.
Just some food for thought with this post.

I took this picture of Ted playing $2/$5 cash back in 2016. It’s almost unimaginable he would play these stakes based on his resume but here he is doing so.
View attachment 803462
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If you see him again tell him I’ve got his Binions jacket :p
CEA89ED0-E869-43A9-9714-5D1E6BD169DB.jpeg

I’ve played limit poker probably 5/10 in Prague with Jeff Lisandro
Some guys are just down to earth cool
 
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Taghkanic said:
IIRC the earliest serious applications of game theory were in Cold War nuclear strategy and negotiation. It only came to poker decades later.

The movie A Beautiful Mind is about the mathematician who pioneered game theory.

Click to expand...
yes, it was John Nash and he won the Nobel prize for economics. IIRC, his mathematical theory’s eventually came to be the underlying premise for Rational Expectations.
 
utgtrash said:
GTO pretty much informs a baseline strategy if you do not have additional information about the specific player you are in a headsup pot with. Even having general information about the population should help you deviate from baseline. And when i say informs, i mean that loosely because NO ONE plays GTO, so if you hear people talking GTO, they are usually fish. terms like balance, ranges, polarization - these are not GTO terms, just vernacular for fundamental poker strategy.

negotiation strategy is probably the best way of understanding GTO actually, and it is just the idea that with two rational actors, maybe even well seasoned negotiators, neither is going to deviate too much from optimal for fear of getting exploited. you would have to discover some serious flaws in your opponent before trying to go for a home run - i.e. they are not the tough seasoned negotiator you were worried about.

but the fact is, most people are terrible at poker. it's the boring thing about poker - you are making most profit from exploiting the same leaks over and over again, and in my games, these are in multiway pots. GTO is rendered pretty useless. however, as a student of the game, i want to know what the solvers say because i probably did not know how to exploit a strange play at the table, like last night when EP bet 400 into 600 pot into my AQ on a Q652 two heart board with 2000 eff behind and i folded and he had Qx of hearts. ( had the A of hearts) i can "wait for a better spot" but also, i would like to know how to not be exploited in case i have the leak of overfolding there. i know that i can't implement whatever the solver says in real time, since it will be a mix of calling/folding/jamming etc but still, reviewing what is GTO there is useful.

Andrew Brokos Play Optimal Poker books are really good and probably must reads IMO. mainly they apply to headsup pots in deep stack NLH. even these conditions don't come up that often in games i play in. (straddles cut the stacks down to < 150bb, 4-5 callers every pot, etc.) You would never throw out your winning tactics but it might help to find leaks in your own play.
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This is a very good explanation and makes perfect sense! I would totally agree with this point.
 
Anthony Martino said:
Holy crap, I'm still on the previous stream and watched Garrets laydown against Dwan, my god

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this is actually not even an unusual fold.

what do you think garrets overbet range is on the river? AJ and QJ in almost all cases check back the turn and Q9s is not flatting against a dwan utg open with no one else calling, so AQ, JJ, TT, 44 and JT and KJ (mostly suited) are for the most part all he goes that big with for value. could also sometimes have something like AJ or KK but these take different lines most of the time so should be heavily discounted.

there was 41k in the pot (the bet being 25k into 16k) and dwan raised to 89k.

if garret wanted to play defensively to make dwans theoretical bluffs break even, which is more or less what solvers arrive at, he continues with 33% of his range and folds 66%. if we enumerate all the hand combinations and weight them based on the likelihood of garret having them from play on previous streets AQ is probably not beyond that threshold. probably below that by quite a bit but hard to say. and in actuality it's worse to call with AQ than AJ because dwan is never raising AQ or worse for value, and AJ has better blocking properties.

if there's anything unusual about the hand it's dwans river raise sizing which i think is pretty close to being too big. normally large sizing is good when you have the nuts but this is a rare situation where you have so much of a lock on the deck that it becomes really, really hard to get called by almost anything. i still think it's ok because the sizing is not so big that it should be shutting out hands like TT and 44, but if it was just a bit bigger - it would get to the point where almost all the hands that garret would want to continue with include a J. which is probably not good if you have JJ. if dwan goes all in for 217k he'd for sure be shitting the bed and even something like 120k is getting close to that point. this is a thing that comes up quite often at 5 and especially 6 card omaha.
 

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