18 Sep 2024 exploit GTO bluff ranges value bet If you're interested in poker strategy, you've heard about an unbeatable style of play known as Game Theory Optimal, or GTO for short. But if you're new to GTO, you've likely been confused by all those fancy terms and complicated programs and charts that are often used when discussing this topic. So, in this article, we're going to explain, in a very simple way, how virtually every single GTO strategy is constructed. The Main Goal of GTO We should start out by this. The main goal of GTO is to maximize EV of our entire range. GTO is simply a scientific method to do just that. It focuses on choosing the action for each hand in each scenario that is most likely to win the most chips. So what does that mean in practical terms? To make things easier, let's categorize the types of hands you may get in poker as: Strong Medium Weak Let's start with our strongest hands, which often include full houses, flushes, straights, sets, two pairs, overpairs and strong top pairs. The main source of winnings in poker is by playing large pots with strong hands. When we have a strong hand we'll often want to bet or raise over multiple streets. However, If we only bet and raise our strong hands, smart opponents will eventually stop calling us with worse. In online poker, figuring out if our opponents are only betting strong hands is very easy using HUDs. So, in order to induce our opponents to call our bets when we're holding a strong hand, we need to bet with our weak hands as well, also known as bluffs. Bluffing also has the extra potential benefit of making our opponent to fold a better hand. However, if you've played poker for a while, you probably know that you typically have weak hands much more often than you have strong hands. This means you can't just bluff every time you're holding a weak hand, or your observant opponents will notice and start calling you down lighter. When Should We Bluff? So, the next question is: How do you decide when to bluff and when not to? Well, you could just flip a coin, and that strategy would probably actually be okay. But there's a better way. Equity You can split your weak hands by their specific characteristics. This may include deciding to bluff with a good draw, or choosing not to bluff with pure air. For example, on the board K♦2♠5♥J♦, we could decide to bluff with Q♦T♦, and choose to just give up with A♥7♥, because we have a much higher chance to hit a big hand and win a big pot with the former due to its high equity. Blockers We can also choose to bluff when our hand makes it more likely that the villain will fold, a concept known as the card removal effect, or simply blockers. For example, on this river, we may choose to bluff with A♦T♣, but choose to give up with A♥T♣, because when we're holding the A♦, it makes it impossible for our opponents to have the nut flush, which increases the probability that we'll get a fold. When you balance betting strong and weak hands in this way, it puts villain in a tough spot. If he has the nuts, then defending is easy. What about his medium hands, such as second and lower pairs, and perhaps strong A-highs? If hero only bets strong hands, then villain can comfortably fold all his medium hands, and if hero bets all his weak hands, villain can just comfortably call all his medium hands. But if Hero starts balancing his bets between strong and weak hands, then villain is forced to call some medium hands and fold others. If he doesn't, then Hero would be able to readjust by either under or over bluffing. When Should We Bluff Catch? How does villain decide which medium hands to call and which to fold? Well, again, he could just flip a coin, but similar to the bluffing situation, villain can improve his chances for calling or folding correctly by choosing hands that good blockers. For example, facing an all-in shove for our tournament life, we may decide to call with 44, but fold with T9, because holding the T reduces the probability that the villain is holding a bluff like T7, T8, QT, or KT, for example. So, we've talked about what hero should do with his strong and weak hands, what about his medium hands? Since hands in this category generally will have a decent but not great chance to be ahead of villain, they generally do not want to play for a big pot and will often be comfortable checking down. So, these middle hands can often be played as a bet or check, often depending on their equity. However, since we just mentioned that our strong hands usually want to bet over multiple streets, if we take a passive strategy only with our medium and weak hands (that we give up), our observant opponents would know that when we check, the likelihood of us holding a strong hand is zero or very low, and they could use this information to apply maximum pressure against us. To protect our passive lines, we can start to play passively with some of our strong hands, also known as slow playing. But sometimes it also has a benefit of allowing our opponents to make a hand on later streets, whereas if we just bet he might just fold. Which Hands to Slowplay? So, the next question is: How do we determine which strong hands to bet and which strong hands to slow play? We could choose to slow play our hands that: don't need much protection block villain's calling range For example, we may decide to c-bet with JJ, but check with AA, because JJ benefit from protection against overcards on the turn and river, whereas AA are less vulnerable and do not need the same protection on this dry board. In this river scenario, we may decide to slow play KK, but bet 55, because holding KK makes it much less likely that villain has a top pair. In other words, our hand blocks top pair, which is a calling hand, whereas 55 does not. What we've just described in a nutshell is essentially how every single GTO strategy is constructed, and it doesn't matter if it's heads-up, full ring, MTT, or cash. GTO is all about maximizing EV by balancing our strong, medium, and weak hands in a way that makes our range and strategies very difficult (if not impossible) to exploit. The essence of GTO, in terms of a practical application, all comes down to combo selection, knowing which hands to pick within which bucket, depending on its specific parameters. Caveats about GTO Using Before we conclude this article, we should note a few caveats about GTO. Notice that we discussed the need to balance our range in the context of facing a smart opponent. So, if your opponent is not paying attention to what you're doing, you can usually throw a balance completely out the window, and focus on exploitative play. Even if your opponents are observant, a practical, real-life application of GTO doesn't require perfect balance. It requires just enough balance, so that your strategies are not face-up. True GTO strategies are calculated by a computer playing a single hand against itself billions of times. But in real life, you aren't playing the same hand billions of times against your opponents. It means that even if you don't find balance in one particular hand, it probably won't matter as long as you keep a general sense of balance over the long run. When the computer plays against itself, it is effectively clairvoyant. It knows the exact probability of hands its opponent can have, and how frequently it takes each action. Your real-life opponents are not clairvoyants. Some may not have even graduated high school, so you don't need to worry as much about maintaining a perfectly balanced strategy. Although the overall principles of GTO are relatively simple and straightforward, the execution of them is not. Knowing how to optimally balance your strategy can be incredibly difficult, as it will be impacted by numerous factors such as: previous actions board texture stack-to-pot ratio (SPR) position That's why you may see 30-minute long analyses going over a single hand! In this article, we only briefly touched upon how to rationally differentiate between the weak hands we bluff with versus the weak hands we give up, the medium hands we call versus fold, or the strong hands we bet versus slowplay. The reality is that there's a whole world of complexity involved in making these decisions to maximize your edge. If you want to learn more about this GTO world, stay with us!