What the Heck is GTO Anyway?
GTO is short for “Game Theory Optimal”. The concept of game theory is thought to be derived by a French mathematician, Emil Borel in the 1920s. In his writings, he used the game of poker and the strategy of bluffing, in particular, to illustrate the concept of game theory.
Throughout history, poker players have generally played “exploitative poker”. This is the style of poker, where you observe your opponent’s tendencies and exploit them. For example, if you observe that a player is super-tight, your could exploit that tendency by bluffing him when he doesn’t appear to want to put money into the pot.
There has always been the occasional mathematician-type player around, such as Chris Ferguson. However, the majority of poker players played exploitative poker. That is, until around 2010. It was around that time when poker players on forums would be talking about GTO poker. It became more than just the in thing. There was intellectual snobbery associated with talking about GTO.
In this article, I will explain why GTO poker is likely to be a waste of time for microstakes poker players.
The Analogy Between GTO and Rock-Paper-Scissors
GTO has often compared to the game, rock-paper-scissors. The GTO strategy is to randomly select paper, scissors or rock. This could be called “Balancing Your Range”.
The idea is that if you vary from this strategy, you can be exploited. For example, if you play paper more often than one third of the time, you can be exploited by an astute opponent who increases the frequency with which he plays scissors. If you play scissors too often, you can be exploited by an observant opponent who increases how often he plays rock.
Whatever distribution of rock, paper and scissors that the non-GTO player plays, both players will break even. In other words, you can’t win playing a GTO strategy.
Balancing Your Hand Range in Poker
In the context of poker, GTO involves balancing your hand range, such that an observant player can’t exploit you. You might be wondering what a balanced hand range is. Let’s look at an unbalanced hand range first.
Let’s say that your opponent always bets strongly with strong hand and folds with weak hands. This is an unbalanced range. An observant player would be able to read the strength of this opponent’s hands. Another type of unbalanced range is, when an opponent played weak hands as if they are strong and strong hands as if they are weak. Again, this type of opponent is exploitable.
A balanced hand range involves playing a group of hands the same way. Therefore, you might play some strong hands, some middle strength hands and some weak hands the same way.
GTO is a defensive style that can never be beaten. Now some readers might be thinking that this is great. If you were playing this game for money, you can never lose.
Before I explain why that is a fallacy, I will explain what exploitative poker is.
Exploitative Strategies
In contrast, an exploitative strategy can beat an opponent who is not playing a GTO strategy. However, it can also lose to a player who is playing a superior exploitative strategy. If this is the case, why would you ever play someone who is better at exploiting than you? When a player plays GTO, he is effectively opting out of the exploitative game. Therefore, he is saying that his opponent is the better exploitative player.
GTO is a Losing Strategy – The GTO Poker Gurus Forgot about the Rake!
In most legal poker games, a perfect GTO strategy means that, on average, you will always lose money!
The poker mathematicians forgot to factor into their equations that, nearly all legal poker games involve a rake or a variation of a rake. When you include a rake, it would mean that if 2 GTO computers played an infinite number of hands against each other, they would both lose money. In this scenario, the house would do very well. When neither player has an advantage, the house wins all the money.
To be fair, some GTO software does take into account the rake. However, if there is a rake, the GTO gurus cannot claim that GTO is a method whereby you can never lose.
Therefore, if you are playing a perfect GTO strategy, you are burning money in the form of a rake. This would be the case even if you were playing against a total fish.
At microstakes, the rake (relative to your stake) tends to be more expensive than at high stakes. However, at stakes, where players are frequently stacking off, the rake is also going to get expensive.
So, the only justification for playing GTO is that the perfect GTO player may lose less than he would if he played an exploitative strategy.
In other words, the GTO strategy is minimising losses and not breaking even. NITs don’t take the loss of their blinds into account. GTO players don’t take the loss of their rake into account.
When is a GTO strategy useful in poker?
Moving the situation to poker, a GTO strategy is useful if there is a better player at the table and you end up having to play a hand with him. In poker tournaments, you don’t get a choice of who you play against. However, in cash games, you do have a choice. If a player feels the need to shrink into a GTO style too often, he is probably playing above the level he should be.
There are situations where you are at a table with a lot of weak players who you can exploit. However, there are also one or two good players at the table. A GTO strategy might be useful here. You might want to exploit the weaker players, while playing defensively against the strong players.
A GTO strategy might come in useful when you are out of position. This is because just being out of position gives you a disadvantage in the exploitative game.
Exploitative Players have Always Balanced their Ranges
They might not be consciously balancing their ranges. However, they alter their ranges depending on their opponent.
How often is GTO relevant at Microstakes Poker?
I would say, almost never. At microstakes, almost everyone is exploitable. Sure, you will find situations where you are exploitable and your opponent isn’t.
However, whether you need to play GTO, depends on how observant your opponents are. When you are playing online, most microstakes players are playing on multiple tables simultaneously. These players are unlikely to be watching every hand that you play and making an accurate mental note of your hand ranges.
The money comes from players who you can exploit. This is especially the case at the stakes in which the vast majority of online poker players play. As such, this is where the majority of poker players should focus their attention.
The Ugly Poker Exploit
The emphasis in GTO poker has given rise to guru-style teachers, many of whom are ex-professional players. Their YouTube poker lessons just involve the guru bleating the phrase “balance your range” repeatedly. This is an easier way to teach compared to analysing hands.
In my opinion, many of the GTO gurus are using their fame to exploit beginners and intermediate players. Many people are prone to celebrity worship. Therefore, they believe that, if a famous person says something, it must be true. In addition, people don’t seem to recognise that when a guru repeats “balance your range”, as if it’s the answer to every poker problem, he is not really giving you any information. GTO concepts sound complicated. Therefore, beginners might feel that they need to pay money for help.
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people”
-Socrates
Because the GTO poker gurus have little to say (apart from “balance your range”), many end up going down the “he said, she said” route.
If you look at the most famous GTO poker gurus, many of them spend a lot of their time quarreling with and talking about other people.
If they are not talking about other people, they are usually talking about poker events.
This is not sharing knowledge.
If you were around in the early days of the online poker boom, poker players talked mainly about strategy.
To me, it is clear that beginners and intermediate players should learn exploitative poker. GTO may be useful at a higher level of poker. However, as long as you are playing against microstakes players, who play on multiple tables and are unlikely to be studying their opponents’ hand ranges off the table, you are probably safe not to try and play like a computer.
Consider the following.
The poker gurus made money by exploiting other players at the poker table. Are they now making money in the business world by exploiting their students?
They’ve done it before. Remember, all those books, with all those silly starting hand charts? How about increasing their word count in books with an obligatory chapter on bankroll management (that nobody reads)?
They also recommended calling and not 3-betting with many of the starting hands in late position.
They gave players a recipe for starting hands, that didn’t take account of who the other players at the table were.
The commonality in their poker and business strategy may be exploitation.
You might not be the fish at the table but you might be the equivalent in the GTO poker guru’s business.