4 ms·

The book “no limit theory and practice” continues to be the most valuable poker book I’ve read. That said about 80% of that book and 95% of anything written ab

by eof 4y ago

The book “no limit theory and practice” continues to be the most valuable poker book I’ve read. That said about 80% of that book and 95% of anything written about poker before about 2019 is irrelevant to today’s games. People never intended to play game theory optimal in the past; it was a war of “leveling” your opponent into making the wrong move. You would make money by playing an “exploitive strategy” meaning, you would make decisions that are not game theory optimal but do exploit your specific opponents tendency. These days that doesn’t work beyond micros (or small stakes at a brick and mortar casino.) Solvers, both the software and theory/knowledge have evolved so quickly in the last few years that the game has radically shifted toward simply playing an unexploitable GTO strategy better than your opponents.

iknowSFR 4y ago
Fascinating. I haven’t played or thought about poker in 15 years. Can you elaborate more on the current strategy of poker? A real example would be helpful.
- orwin 4y ago
  People use rng generators to take decisions nowadays. Impossible to really exploit.
  - RivieraKid 4y ago
    Using randomization doesn't mean you're anywhere close to being unexploitable.
- zucker42 4y ago
  A large idea in modern poker theory is playing the Nash equilibrium strategy. A Nash equilibrium is where no player can improve their expected result by unilaterally changing their strategy, and two player games provably have the property that if you play any Nash equilibrium strategy, you expected value will always be greater than or equal to your EV when your opponent also plays an equilibrium strategy. The application of this is that at any given point during a hand you and your opponent have a "range" of hands (the term in the technical solver literature is an information set) that it would make sense for you to have from your opponents perspective. A range is a probalistic weighting of hands. Every action changes a players range, and for example if a player bluffs too much you can exploit that by calling with a bigger range against them. So poker becomes a game of, rather than figuring out what your opponent has, instead establishing a baseline strategy that can't be exploited no matter what your opponent does and then adjusting that to optimally exploit your opponent. That's the basic framework. Another book recommendations is "Modern Poker Theory".
- RivieraKid 4y ago
  At every decision point, you know what your range is and what your opponent range is. Then you choose one or two bet/raise sizes based on the board and the ranges. Then you split your range into categories: value bet, call, bluff, fold. And then you look at your hole cards and play based on its category. Of course, this is very hard to do in your head so, in practice, players rely on various principles and heuristics based on what the solver does in various situations. Here's a pro explaining his thought process: https://www.partypoker.com/blog/en/its-the-same-game-but-it-isnt.html https://www.partypoker.com/blog/en/its-the-same-game-but-it-...
- kuboble 4y ago
  You can search youtube for things like "hand analysis with piosolver"
- eof 4y ago
  I can only tell you my perspective as an ex poker pro who has not studied with solvers. But the basic idea is that you put in a range of starting hands for yourself and the opponent, and possible bet sizes, and the solver will brute force a play that approximates Nash equilibrium. The output of the solver will be something like “45% of the time bet. 55% check.” Or “95% fold. 5% raise X” The general loop as I understand it is inputting tricky/common situations running the solver and basically memorizing it.
throwaway98797 4y ago
this may be true online people in live games are impatient degens, money will always be there with a basic strategy add in a bit a leveling and you can print source: i’m a degen whose loses all the time
csa 4y ago
> These days that doesn’t work beyond micros (or small stakes at a brick and mortar casino.) I would like to introduce you to Hustler Casino Live. I assume that most of the games they steam are not B&M small stakes. There is plenty of room for exploitative play at higher stakes if you game select well. This is especially true if one has figured out the home game scene (where the best games are, imho). Online on competitive sites, folks still make have relatively large gaps in their game up to nl100. On online agent apps… lol, gto is not a thing except at 5/10 and higher (sometimes). I will add that all of this is a discussion about nlhe. There is a push to get away from solver-based games online because they are largely bad for the ecology. Casuals get fleeced rapidly, even by folks who implement a “gto” strategy poorly. Just having a good starting hand strategy/chart is usually a huge advantage alone. The following are some ways that this is happening, and I think that these are the future of poker: - plo - more blinds/antes (3 blinds, big blind ante, short deck antes, etc.) - bomb pots - double board - deep stack (most solver work is for 100bb or less) - mixed games Plo bomb pots are typically very much loved wherever they are played, and double board adds an extra element of skill. It lets causal gamblers gamble and get action (see every flop!), but there is a huge skill element that is not in solver territory yet. Any poker scene for which a gto strategy can reasonably be implemented will rapidly wither to a small pecking order of pros. I hope folks in the poker playing community, especially pros and serious casuals, can embrace games where gto theory is not the baseline. It’s healthy for the poker ecology by keeping casuals involved and engaged.
- lambda 4y ago
  > Casuals get fleeced rapidly It's funny how the meta-game works here. Fleecing the casuals is, of course, the way the pros make money; so it's basically the point of the game. But I can see how fleecing the casuals slowly is probably a better long-term strategy, that will ultimately extract more money from them, than doing it quickly, draining their bankroll, which may stop them from playing or get them to play less consistently.
  - csa 4y ago
    > But I can see how fleecing the casuals slowly is probably a better long-term strategy, that will ultimately extract more money from them, than doing it quickly, draining their bankroll, which may stop them from playing or get them to play less consistently. This is exactly correct. This is why it’s difficult to build and sustain a plo8/nlo8 ecology online or live. The good players just clean out the casuals so quickly and relatively risk free via freerolling. It largely only exists in a sustainable way in mixed rotations. I was an online plo8 player who had to switch to plo to increase my game selection. It got to a point that I knew all of the other players at the table, and they were not giving up much in terms of ev (although most of them had exploitable gaps in their games).
Denzel 4y ago
Most of what you say is accurate however it’s worth understanding that GTO really only applies in specific situations. E.g., heads up (2 players) play. GTO is unable to produce an unexploitable strategy against 2+ players. Additionally, as a matter of practical application, less of theory, GTO suffers in ultra deep stacked heads up play where effective stacks are > 500 BB deep. NL Hold ‘Em has progressed a lot but it’s far from solved.
- albedoa 4y ago
  Yeah, I've come to start smacking my lips when my opponents start parroting "GTO" and related jargon. Their understanding of it is more dangerous to them than it is to me. It's a continuation of what we saw in the 2000s: entire sections of the book store dedicated to poker, selling confidence to millions of new players who misapply their concepts. There is still a lot of money to be made in micro- and small-stakes NLHE.
bionsystem 4y ago
In my opinion the most valuable book that is still relevant from pre-19 is Mathematics of Poker. But proper poker study should come from playing around with solvers, ideally with somebody who can guide you through not making the most common mistakes.

by eof 4y ago

iknowSFR 4y ago

Fascinating. I haven’t played or thought about poker in 15 years. Can you elaborate more on the current strategy of poker? A real example would be helpful.

orwin 4y ago
People use rng generators to take decisions nowadays. Impossible to really exploit.
- RivieraKid 4y ago
  Using randomization doesn't mean you're anywhere close to being unexploitable.
zucker42 4y ago
A large idea in modern poker theory is playing the Nash equilibrium strategy. A Nash equilibrium is where no player can improve their expected result by unilaterally changing their strategy, and two player games provably have the property that if you play any Nash equilibrium strategy, you expected value will always be greater than or equal to your EV when your opponent also plays an equilibrium strategy. The application of this is that at any given point during a hand you and your opponent have a "range" of hands (the term in the technical solver literature is an information set) that it would make sense for you to have from your opponents perspective. A range is a probalistic weighting of hands. Every action changes a players range, and for example if a player bluffs too much you can exploit that by calling with a bigger range against them. So poker becomes a game of, rather than figuring out what your opponent has, instead establishing a baseline strategy that can't be exploited no matter what your opponent does and then adjusting that to optimally exploit your opponent. That's the basic framework. Another book recommendations is "Modern Poker Theory".
RivieraKid 4y ago
At every decision point, you know what your range is and what your opponent range is. Then you choose one or two bet/raise sizes based on the board and the ranges. Then you split your range into categories: value bet, call, bluff, fold. And then you look at your hole cards and play based on its category. Of course, this is very hard to do in your head so, in practice, players rely on various principles and heuristics based on what the solver does in various situations. Here's a pro explaining his thought process: https://www.partypoker.com/blog/en/its-the-same-game-but-it-isnt.html https://www.partypoker.com/blog/en/its-the-same-game-but-it-...
kuboble 4y ago
You can search youtube for things like "hand analysis with piosolver"
eof 4y ago
I can only tell you my perspective as an ex poker pro who has not studied with solvers. But the basic idea is that you put in a range of starting hands for yourself and the opponent, and possible bet sizes, and the solver will brute force a play that approximates Nash equilibrium. The output of the solver will be something like “45% of the time bet. 55% check.” Or “95% fold. 5% raise X” The general loop as I understand it is inputting tricky/common situations running the solver and basically memorizing it.

throwaway98797 4y ago

this may be true online people in live games are impatient degens, money will always be there with a basic strategy add in a bit a leveling and you can print source: i’m a degen whose loses all the time

csa 4y ago

> These days that doesn’t work beyond micros (or small stakes at a brick and mortar casino.) I would like to introduce you to Hustler Casino Live. I assume that most of the games they steam are not B&M small stakes. There is plenty of room for exploitative play at higher stakes if you game select well. This is especially true if one has figured out the home game scene (where the best games are, imho). Online on competitive sites, folks still make have relatively large gaps in their game up to nl100. On online agent apps… lol, gto is not a thing except at 5/10 and higher (sometimes). I will add that all of this is a discussion about nlhe. There is a push to get away from solver-based games online because they are largely bad for the ecology. Casuals get fleeced rapidly, even by folks who implement a “gto” strategy poorly. Just having a good starting hand strategy/chart is usually a huge advantage alone. The following are some ways that this is happening, and I think that these are the future of poker: - plo - more blinds/antes (3 blinds, big blind ante, short deck antes, etc.) - bomb pots - double board - deep stack (most solver work is for 100bb or less) - mixed games Plo bomb pots are typically very much loved wherever they are played, and double board adds an extra element of skill. It lets causal gamblers gamble and get action (see every flop!), but there is a huge skill element that is not in solver territory yet. Any poker scene for which a gto strategy can reasonably be implemented will rapidly wither to a small pecking order of pros. I hope folks in the poker playing community, especially pros and serious casuals, can embrace games where gto theory is not the baseline. It’s healthy for the poker ecology by keeping casuals involved and engaged.

lambda 4y ago
> Casuals get fleeced rapidly It's funny how the meta-game works here. Fleecing the casuals is, of course, the way the pros make money; so it's basically the point of the game. But I can see how fleecing the casuals slowly is probably a better long-term strategy, that will ultimately extract more money from them, than doing it quickly, draining their bankroll, which may stop them from playing or get them to play less consistently.
- csa 4y ago
  > But I can see how fleecing the casuals slowly is probably a better long-term strategy, that will ultimately extract more money from them, than doing it quickly, draining their bankroll, which may stop them from playing or get them to play less consistently. This is exactly correct. This is why it’s difficult to build and sustain a plo8/nlo8 ecology online or live. The good players just clean out the casuals so quickly and relatively risk free via freerolling. It largely only exists in a sustainable way in mixed rotations. I was an online plo8 player who had to switch to plo to increase my game selection. It got to a point that I knew all of the other players at the table, and they were not giving up much in terms of ev (although most of them had exploitable gaps in their games).

Denzel 4y ago

Most of what you say is accurate however it’s worth understanding that GTO really only applies in specific situations. E.g., heads up (2 players) play. GTO is unable to produce an unexploitable strategy against 2+ players. Additionally, as a matter of practical application, less of theory, GTO suffers in ultra deep stacked heads up play where effective stacks are > 500 BB deep. NL Hold ‘Em has progressed a lot but it’s far from solved.

albedoa 4y ago
Yeah, I've come to start smacking my lips when my opponents start parroting "GTO" and related jargon. Their understanding of it is more dangerous to them than it is to me. It's a continuation of what we saw in the 2000s: entire sections of the book store dedicated to poker, selling confidence to millions of new players who misapply their concepts. There is still a lot of money to be made in micro- and small-stakes NLHE.

bionsystem 4y ago

In my opinion the most valuable book that is still relevant from pre-19 is Mathematics of Poker. But proper poker study should come from playing around with solvers, ideally with somebody who can guide you through not making the most common mistakes.