Blind on Blind late

[PokerPiper]

This is a pretty standard GTO spot. Its a shove all day AND its a call all day. Shoving is unexploitable. You can shove pretty much any Ace here and you won't be making a mistake.

[Mellor]

Originally Posted by Gholimoli

ok so ur looking for the line with most EV.

optimal is often used these days in reference to GTO which is game theory optimal which is concerned with not giving away EV as oppose to gaining EV.

Isn't the GTO line is also the highest EV line long term? Any line other than the highest EV is essentially giving up equity. And the true EV of any line takes into account how exploitable it is. That was a point I covered above, that shoving benefits from being unexploitable.

Regardless, my point stands from a purely GTO viewpoint also.

GTO is a relatively new phrase, but the concept has existed years. When I was playing a lot of SnGs we'd have called it Nash's Equilibrium.
A Nash's Equilibrium calc would give use the precise unexploitable shoving range with the highest EV. But we don't have enough info to do that calc. Which is again, all my point ever was.

17 BB effective stacks and we say the antes add up to 1BB as well so:

we make it 3x from SB and BB shoves for another 14BB so:
6BB+ 1BB(antes)=7
so we have to call 14 to win 14+7=21BB
we are getting 21/14=1.5:1 odds
so our breakeven point is the 40% equity mark .

That's all true, even if we made in less than 3BBs, and used a precise chip count. It might only rise to 42%.
But that's not equity, its chips.

say BB jams with 22+,Ax,K8s+,K9o+,JTo+,QTo+ (to me this is a reasonable range for an aggro guy to jam in SB v BB situation ) .
don't have stove here but i would guess the above range is top 25-30% of hands.

A8o has 46% v top 25% and does slightly better versus top 30% and has 48% equity.

25% sounds about right for an agro. Which means its a profitable line itself.
We risk 2 to 2.5BBs, to pick up 2.5BBs, they have to be shoving over 50% for it to be -cEV. Having a 0% risk of ruin benefits the $Equity significantly.

When we shove, what do you think their calling range is? How does A8 do verses that range?

while i agree that cEV is not the same as $EV here,i still don't think we can pass 6% to 8% edges .
in a closer spot where your at best 2% edge then perhaps but not here imo.

You might be right. Maybe we can't pass it here. But we can't know that unless we have the relevant info. That's all my point was.
That said, I'd guess the equity between the two lines is close.

[Gholimoli]

Originally Posted by Mellor

Isn't the GTO line is also the highest EV line long term? Any line other than the highest EV is essentially giving up equity. And the true EV of any line takes into account how exploitable it is. That was a point I covered above, that shoving benefits from being unexploitable.

Regardless, my point stands from a purely GTO viewpoint also.

GTO is a relatively new phrase, but the concept has existed years. When I was playing a lot of SnGs we'd have called it Nash's Equilibrium.
A Nash's Equilibrium calc would give use the precise unexploitable shoving range with the highest EV. But we don't have enough info to do that calc. Which is again, all my point ever was.


That's all true, even if we made in less than 3BBs, and used a precise chip count. It might only rise to 42%.
But that's not equity, its chips.


25% sounds about right for an agro. Which means its a profitable line itself.
We risk 2 to 2.5BBs, to pick up 2.5BBs, they have to be shoving over 50% for it to be -cEV. Having a 0% risk of ruin benefits the $Equity significantly.

When we shove, what do you think their calling range is? How does A8 do verses that range?

You might be right. Maybe we can't pass it here. But we can't know that unless we have the relevant info. That's all my point was.
That said, I'd guess the equity between the two lines is close.

the bold part above is completely false.

GTO(Game theory optimal) or any unexploitable strategy does not ensure the highest EV line at all !
it ensures an EV of 0 or very close to it.

basically a GTO or any unexploitable strategy assumes that we are in an environment that there is no EV to be gianed ,ie your opponents are at least as good as you or better...so the next best option is to not give away any EV .

GTO or Nash ,is a strategy that ensures you give away 0 EV (almost zero cuz as far as i know true GTO dont exist in poker) regardless of your opponent's strategy !
it ensures that your opponent can not adjust to your strategy and exploit your line and gain EV from you...it does so by making him indifferent to calling or folding .

EV of folding is always zero so it ensures that the EV of him calling is also 0 .

so we are indifferent to what he does, and out strategy is independent of his !!!

but obv this is not good for gaining EV at all !

suppose you are playing HU game with an opponent who is better than you in adjusting .
say he has your shove ranges and fold ranges spot on .

based on the above ,he can devise ranges for shoving on you and calling your shoves that would yield the highest EV in the long run...this way he is exploiting you !!!

to counter that,you will have to adjust your ranges such that he cant exploit you no more, but seen as he adjusts better than you,then he can then adjust to your adjustments and so on and so forth...eventually you will reach an equilibrium where its not possible for either of you do adjust any further in order to gain EV.
that is what a Nash equilibrium is .

so even though he is aware of your range ,he cant adjust in order to exploit it.
the EV here will be very close to 0 though for both of you .

now suppose your playing HU versus a guy who folds too much .
in this case you have to adjust your range such that your exploiting him ,so you shove with a wider range so you can gain from him folding too often...so you deviate from a GTO strategy in order to exploit his weakness ,but that in turn leaves you exploitable ...he can now adjust to you and call wider !

not sure if i'm explaining it well but basically if you think you are the better player at the table then fuck GTO and if you think your the mark and the fish on the table then GTO is your friend !!!

[Mellor]

Originally Posted by Gholimoli

the bold part above is completely false.

I probably wasn't clear. I'm talking about the in a vacuum vrs a complete unknown.
Obviously against a total fish (or some other extra info) you could milk them quicker with a different line to GTO.

GTO(Game theory optimal) or any unexploitable strategy does not ensure the highest EV line at all !
it ensures an EV of 0 or very close to it.

That's not true. If it were always 0ev strategy, then its not profitable, which isnt the case.

What you are describing is GTO vrs GTO, which is obviously 0EV in the long run. But any specific hand can still be +EV.

An obvious example to prove the above.
Short handed, short stacked, GTO says to push AA under the gun. This is a +EV play, not 0ev

basically a GTO or any unexploitable strategy assumes that we are in an environment that there is no EV to be gianed ,ie your opponents are at least as good as you or better...so the next best option then is to not give away any EV .

More importantly, The obvious reason to play an unexploitable strategy, is that you are 0ev at worst. But we are hoping that our opponents play sub-optimal (aka worse), and every deviation from them, makes makes it +EV for us.

GTO or Nash ,is a strategy that ensures you give away 0 EV (almost zero cuz as far as i know true GTO dont exist ) regardless of your opponent's strategy !
it ensures that your opponent can not adjust to your strategy an exploit your line and gain EV from you...it does so by making him indifferent to calling or folding .

EV of folding is always zero so it ensures that the EV of him calling is also 0 .

so we are indifferent to what he does and out strategy is independent of his !!!

Unexploited means the opponent can't outplay us. It doesn't mean every hand is 0EV.
Again, shoving AA shorthanded, is unexploitable. It's also +EV

suppose you are playing HU game with an opponent who is better than you in adjusting .
say he has your shove ranges and fold ranges spot on .

based on the above ,he can devise ranges for shoving on you and calling your shoves that would yield the highest EV in the long run...this way he is exploiting you !!!

to counter that,you will have to adjust your ranges such that he cant exploit you no more, but seen as he adjusts better than you,then he can then adjust to your adjustments and so on and so forth...eventually you will reach an equilibrium where its not possible for either of you do adjust any further in order to gain EV.
that is what a Nash equilibrium is.

You are describing a hypothetical opponent playing perfectly. In that case, anything other than GTO can be exploited, which means it will be a losing play, or -EV.
Therefore the best we can hope for is to play perfectly (GTO) in return, in which it reaches 0ev at the limit, also the highest EV.

But as I said, we hopefully aren't playing GTO vrs GTO. We play GTO knowing we can't be exploited, and we want our opponent to call wider, or narrower. Both of which are profitable for us.

now suppose your playing HU versus a guy who folds too much .
in this case you have to adjust your range such that your exploiting him ,so you shove with a wider range so you can gain from him folding too often...so you deviate from a GTO strategy in order to exploit his weakness ,but that in turn leaves you exploitable ...he can now adjust to you and call wider !

not sure if i'm explaining it well but basically if you think you are the better player at the table then fuck GTO and if you think your the mark and the fish on the table then GTO is your friend !!!

I do understand what you are saying. I just think that its a mistake to assume that unexploitable means they won't give up equity to us.

And most importantly, in order to work out a Nash push/fold range (GTO). We need to have more info in order to work out the equity. Which was exactly the point I was making at the start. We've come full circle.

[Gholimoli]

i prob should have said in the first post that I'm no game theory expert, and by that i mean i know fuck all about it !

having said that ,based on what i do know,I'm not saying GTO always produces an EV of 0 ,or that you don't gain if opponent deviates from GTO ...im saying that its goal and design is to not give away EV long term ,and not with gaining max EV long term !

also when i said GTO is for when your opponents can adjust better than you then that will naturally push you both towards GTO after adjustments and counter adjustments ,so its not a hypotetycal scenario at all,just a scenario where you are playing better players !

and yes that does presume that any other strategy other then GTO will be exploited,but if you are not in such environment, and you can choose other strategies with out being exploited,then why not choose an exploitive strategy instead ?

yes you can benefit to certain extent from opponents deviation from GTO but its limited how much .

i don't think un-exploitable means its not possible for them to give up equity to us,i think un-exploitable has a stop-loss of 0 and to ensure that ,i think its limited to how much it can gain the other way .

its not a strategy where worse case scenario is 0 and best case scenario is the highest possible EV of any strategy .

at least i really don't think so or else i haven't a clue what I'm talking about here.

[doke]

Seems to be some confusion about what GTO means, so here's my attempt to explain it.

Let's imagine both blinds have 9 bbs and it gets folded around to the small blind. For simplicity sake let's assume ICM is not a factor. The small blind (let's call him A) knows that the big blind (let's call him B) calls too tight. Say he only calls 10% of the time. This means it's profitable for A to shove 100% of hands. Even 32o is a plus Ev shove because
90% of time it gets through for a gain of 1.5 bbs (so it's (.9*1.5) = +1.35 bbs
10% of time he gets called. 32o will suck out against top 10% roughly 25% of time, so 2.5% of time A gains 9.5 bbs with the shove for an Ev of 0.025*9.5= +0.2375 bbs
7.5% of time A loses the 8.5 bbs he shoves -Ev is 0.075*8.5 = -0.6375 bbs
Summing these three possible outcomes, we find the play is +Ev to the tune of 0.95 bbs

Now let's imagine that after several iterations of this, B realises that A is shoving much wider than he thought (any two in fact) so he adjusts by starting to call wider. Let's say he starts calling any average or better hand, so 50%.
When A shoves 32o now, he's getting called 50% of time, and when called he gets there roughly 30% of time, so his Ev is
(1) 0.5*1.5 = +.75 bbs (when it gets thru)
(2) 0.15*9.5 = +1.425 bbs (when called and he gets there)
(3) 0.35*8.5 = -2.975 bb (when called and we lose)
Now all of a sudden, shoving 32o loses us 0.775 bbs on average in the long run

Imagine again that after getting called light a few times A realises his assumption that B is calling only top 10% is way off, and he realises B is actually calling 50% of time, so he stops shoving all the hands that are no longer profitable shoves.

After a while of this, B realises A has tightened up his shoving range, so he tightens up his calling range a bit.

A then re-adjusts, and they eventually converge on a Nash equilibrium GTO solution where A shoves roughly top 60% of hands and B calls roughly 40% of the time. If either of them diverges from this strategy, they will lose money. For example, if A shoves more than 60% he loses more because the hands he adds lose money long term against B's calls (similar to the situation above where A keeps shoving 32o after B adjusts his calls to 50%). If he shoves less than 60% he loses by folding some hands that are profitable shoves.

If both players stick to the GTO strategy of shove 60% call 40% they will break even in the long run. This is where the common misconception that the goal of GTO is not to make EV (money) but to not lose it. The more correct wording of this concept is something like "the aim of GTO is to at least break even no matter what strategy the opponent adopts. If the opponent also adopts a GTO strategy we break even, but if he adopts any other strategy we make money and he loses".

Does this mean we should always stick to GTO? No. Consider the very first example I gave where we are up against an opponent who is calling too tight. If we stick to GTO and shove 60%, we will still make money against him long term, but not as much as if we shove any two cards. In calling too tight (10% versus GTO 40%) B is adopting what game theory refers to as an exploitable strategy, meaning we can diverge from GTO when playing against it to make even more Ev by adopting what game theory calls an exploitative strategy. So if we are certain that our assumption about A calling too tight is correct, we should diverge.

But here's the rub. Exploitative strategies are by very definition exploitable. If our opponent figures out what we are doing (diverging from GTO), he can switch to an exploitative strategy of our strategy, and now we are the ones being exploited and losing Ev.

[newbie2]

^^^^^ That's some Rain man shit right there ^^^^^

[aidankk]

My head hurts ..

Most of the above way above my pay grade.

My level of thinking goes like this.

1 a8 "shite i hate that hand".
2 F*** it this guy will re raise a load of hands judging by our earlier play
3 Ship sherbert "he cant call"
4 F**k he called with a10, fair play to him I'm some donkey
5 Dealer trows an 8 on the flop. Phew luckbox.

Some stellar responses above in fairness.

[Mellor]

Originally Posted by doke

For simplicity sake let's assume ICM is not a factor.

A then re-adjusts, and they eventually converge on a Nash equilibrium GTO solution where A shoves roughly top 60% of hands and B calls roughly 40% of the time. If either of them diverges from this strategy, they will lose money.[/QUOTE]
What's the point I was trying to make, to didn't explain it nearly as well.

But here's the rub. Exploitative strategies are by very definition exploitable. If our opponent figures out what we are doing (diverging from GTO), he can switch to an exploitative strategy of our strategy, and now we are the ones being exploited and losing Ev.

How long before we see "playing steady GTO + balancing of range with LAG exploitation"

[luckymo32]

1 interesting factor here that people forget to mention is what is the avg. stack in the tournament? I think u should be adjusting accordingly too.. just my 2cents