So how would you beat an opponent playing GTO Rock, Paper, Scissors? Well, you'd have to deviate from time to time. If you know your opponent is going to throw Rock 33% of the time and you see them throw Rock five times in a row, you can be fairly certain that Rock won't show up very often in the next few throws. You now have a 50% chance they will throw Paper and a 50% chance they will throw Scissors. Your optimal strategy here would be to throw Scissors.
- Your Scissors vs Opponent's Scissors = a tie.
- Your Scissors vs Opponent's Paper = a win for you.
You could play your Scissors strategy until your opponent throws a Rock, then revert back to GTO strategy. Once you see a pattern again you can deviate from GTO to create a winning strategy.
You're probably thinking, 'Great, I'm a Rock, Paper, Scissors pro…what does this have to do with poker?'. Well GTO, in its very basic form, is just the art of perfect balance. Let's explain in poker terms.
You're probably thinking, 'Great, I'm a Rock, Paper, Scissors pro…what does this have to do with poker?'. Well GTO, in its very basic form, is just the art of perfect balance. Let's explain in poker terms.
- Rock = Raise for value 33%
- Paper = Check 33%
- Scissors = Raise as bluff 33%
Let's say on the river the above were your three options. Just as in Rock, Paper, Scissors, you'll need to find the right balance. Of course, with poker it's much more complicated, based on many different factors including your opponent.
- Play solved poker hands and get instant feedback on the precise EV (Expected Value) Loss of every action. The WPT GTO Trainer allows you to rapidly plug leaks and learn the Game Theory Optimal strategies that have dominated the highest stakes games in the world.
- Game theory optimal (GTO) strategy means that we are taking optimal unexploitable strategy vs. Our opponents, and we are guaranteed to make money against them. However, we are playing a game of incomplete information, so it is very hard to reach the actual GTO strategy point.
- What is GTO poker? The letters stand for game-theory optimal. The basic idea of GTO analysis is that no-limit hold'em can be treated and solved like a math problem. Somewhere out there in mathland, there is an optimal strategy for no-limit hold'em.
GTO is a STRATEGY, but the meaning of the word in the poker community is player around with. Fundamentally, again, GTO is just a strategy. Assume we are playing heads up poker. Given every decision in poker can be defined mathematically, GTO strategy is achieved when every decision you make is either breakeven or +EV.
Gto Poker Concepts Games
Whilst the perfect balance may be to bluff the river 33% of the time, it wouldn't make sense to bluff an opponent you know will call you 100% of the time. In this case you can only raise your value hands and check your weaker hands.
However, if this opponent notices that you only ever bet on the river with value hands, so starts folding, they are exploiting your play. You could then start to bluff the river, exploiting their play, until they figure out you are bluffing. After they figure out you only bluff the river, you could revert back to GTO of 33% bluff, 33% value, 33% check making us much tougher to play against. Again, we can deviate from GTO where doing so makes sense.
Gto Poker Concepts Game
GTO is really not too important at lower stakes games, but is important for high stakes, nosebleed games and high rollers. For most of us, whilst it's good knowledge to have, it's probably not as important as balancing our value bets, bluffs and calls to exploit our opponents.
