Poker strategy winning with game theory

It should be noted that this concept is most commonly used in off-table study and can be difficult to apply in-game. However, studying these beginner GTO concepts off-table will assist with your decision-making during a hand, especially against opponents who show relentless aggression. To help simplify this, here is a poker GTO chart of common bet sizes you may encounter in a poker hand, and the corresponding minimum defence frequency you must apply.

To determine which hands, you want to continue with, take the number of hand combos in your starting hand range and then use the MDF to calculate how many combos you should be continuing with. As an example, suppose you open-raise in the HJ and the BB calls. The flop comes Qh9h6c. Hands that we should continue with are those that retain the highest equity and playability, including:. Our opponent bets full-pot. This strategy should be comprised of our best flush draws, our best straight draws, and our best made hands, which might look something like this:.

Be sure to think about blocker effects and card removal when calling with some weaker hands to avoid overcalling and to decide which specific combos are best to continue with, according to MDF. To remain unexploitable and to remain balanced and unpredictable , you must balance the number of bluffs to your value bets when you bet.

The number of bluffs you include in your betting range is dependent on how big of a bet you make in relation to the pot.

NOTE: For the flop, generally, you want a bluff to value bet ratio of about 2 : 1. As for the river, use the chart below to determine GTO poker bluff frequencies relative to your bet sizing choice :. In addtion, ace-high usually carries with it some showdown value still on the river. If a 3-flush came on a river and you wanted to raise, bluff raising with some AX combos holding the Ace of the bluff suit on the board would be an acceptable option.

If you block the nut flush, it means that your opponent cannot have that nutted combo in his range. GTO beginner concepts and strategies do not only consist of bluffs and value bets. They will also allow you to see how often you should be cbetting in certain spots and also show which bet size to use! PokerSnowie and PioSolver are the most common programs selling on the market right now to assist with GTO work and poker study behind-the-scenes.

It will also help increase your level of thinking and understanding to be more GTO for poker. Tournaments often have shorter stacks in later stages than what will be typically found in cash games. As a result, in order to follow guidelines for GTO poker, Nash charts have been created, tweaked, and used over many years in order to know what hands to shove with and also when to call, depending on what number of big blinds you have when you find yourself shortstacked.

For the pusher chart, if you divide all the numbers by 2, you can see which hands you should be pushing with from the Button. Simply following the charts below, though, will lead your play to being GTO and unexploitable. But the reality is that this process is unreliable against weak players. We can avoid ending up in this sort of situation by using a GTO-influenced bluffing strategy, which keeps us from confusing ourselves and getting into leveling wars on the flop with no equity.

Another benefit of a GTO-based approach to poker is that it forestalls potentially incorrect assumptions of other players. A well-constructed GTO strategy eliminates confusion, and helps you make the long-term profitable play.

Many players incorrectly judge how they played a hand by its outcome. Yet, thinking objectively can be tough, especially when the result of a hand is either really bad or really good. Game theory provides a foundation for discerning mistakes more easily. Why is theory important when it comes to making badass adjustments in your strategy?

Suppose you just forgot everything you know about poker strategy, except the rudimentary knowledge of the game, and you are just about to play your first hand ever. Hero calls. How could you adjust to exploit him in the future? Well, without understanding the theoretically correct way of playing his specific hand, you would not know where to start. This knowledge makes it easy to deduce ways to exploit this opponent. Striving for a perfect GTO strategy might seem like the logical conclusion, but the truth is nobody plays an entirely game theory optimal strategy.

Poker has yet to be solved by man or machine, but we still highly recommend using game theory to influence your strategy as much as possible. As always, this means working on your game both on and off the felt. Note: Ready to take your skills to the next level? Master the secrets behind the success of world-class poker players inside the Upswing Lab.

This is Dynamik Widget Area. Why use a GTO poker strategy? There are two main reasons: With a balanced, GTO-based strategy, you will win money in the long run regardless of how skillful your opponents are. Making adjustments to counter your opponents is easier if you have a baseline strategy from which to adjust more on this later. Level-based thinking starts with you considering only your own hand. When the bubble bursts and that fourth-place player gets knocked out, your goal switches from making the money to now getting 1 st place.

There is a huge prize difference between 3rd to 2nd place and 2nd to 1st place. Again, like in tip 1 above, effective calls are made with hands at the top of their range. As the short stack, look for opportunities to double-up against either player with hands ahead of their ranges. Be aware of this before you shove as a bluff with some of your weaker holdings. We play poker because we enjoy it and we want to make money.

Well, an effective way to make money is to put yourself in the most profitable situation as many times as possible. What is the most profitable situation?

Bread and Butter means that you are in position on the flop as the preflop raiser against 1 or 2 players. The reason this is the most profitable spot is because you have a positional advantage and a range advantage. The positional advantage means you get to act after your opponent on the flop, turn and river.

This is where the most important poker skill of hand reading comes into play. They have a small open-raising range because they are a TAG player. You hold 88 and the flop comes down You know they can make this play with almost all their hands.

You think they would only make this bet with TP or better. So, you left the hand and likely saved yourself a lot of chips. Considering their range can also help you earn value. Your opponent donk bets for just 1bb. What do you make of this? The 1bb donk is a blocking bet designed to let them see the turn super cheap. So, what do you do? You raise of course. You want to raise it enough so they overpay for their draw.

One piece of information that your opponents cannot avoid giving you is the size of bet they use. An unknown player open-raises 3. How likely will he fold to a 3bet bluff? Yep, not that likely at all. What do you make of this raise size? Is trying to maximize the value of his hand against the blinds, or is he trying a cheap steal?

What you need to do is pay attention to the size of every bet or raise you face, and make a value judgment on it. What should I do? I think he likes his hand.

I mentioned in the last tip that poker is a game of incomplete information. But if you play online, you have access to useful information in the form of a heads-up display, or HUD. You still have your powers of observation, your logic and reasoning and experience as well. The HUD just gives you a bit more information to utilize. Your HUD can be a great tool, but you have to learn how to use it. If he called a 3bet for example, his range mostly has pairs, AX hands and Broadways.

This can be so much easier to get them to fold on the flop. When someone calls you, and before the flop even hits, look at their Fold to Flop Cbet. Lastly, make sure the effective stacks are deep enough so bluffing on their honest street can get them to fold.

You want to make money and limpers are a great source of profits. Limpers want 1 thing: to see the flop as cheap as possible in order to hit a strong hand. This causes them to limp with any pair, suited connectors, suited gappers, all broadways, most Aces and lots of other suited hands. So, when you find limpers you should automatically color-coded them with a green label. Yeppers, table 1 is the ideal table for high profit potential.

The tables you choose to play on should be as close to this ideal as possible. Green is the color you need to see when table selecting. If the site you play on allows it, scroll through the lobbies and see if you can spot table with lots of fish. It might take orbits to get a feel for the table and spot the fish.