Ahhh…now I am freakin' totally pissed…I have spent 1 hour twice per night writing a post in another section only to get access denied…So forget all the niceties…I cannot afford them just to get my post zapped.

a) Why should I be interested in GTO? So far as I understand it an unexploitable GTO style is great vs. a superior opponent, but vs a lesser villain it is leaving $ on the table. It is a framework to work within when you are on the ropes…most times it is losing you $.

b) HMR Calc. Why am I interested? Is it an attempt at a GTO solution? Pokersnowie got shot down in flames when it claimed the same…was almost totally discredited in fact. A GTO solution is as yet out of reach… no-one knows what it might look like. I cannot believe anyone is claiming they have it nailed. Crev? the same.  I am somewhat familiar with the thing as my coach is a proponent…but I have zero clue as to how it incorporates a GTO solution. ICMizer? Short stacks? Are we talking about Nash ranges? Sorry if my questions sound lame to those in the know. 

c) Yes Will Tipton's 1st book is concerned with a game theory optimal solution to HU play. And it is more accessible than many books, although it helps to have a maths degree. Have not read his second. Note: Heads Up Hold'em. 

d) Personally I am very happy knowing very little about GTO. And forget ICMizer…I LOVE SNGwizard…

On both counts…Why am I wrong?

oh and by the way I would recommend Andrew Brokos for just about everything…OP

Thank you DouggyF,

Perhaps you or someone else out there who knows this stuff can help me. I expect I may make myself look like a noob here to some, although I have searched online for “the answer” to no avail: in fact the conclusion I have come to is that whilst many talk like they know all about GTO, in reality they are almost clueless, and the few who do seem to know talk way over my head. 

I am confused about the relationship between ICM and Nash. As I understood it ICM was concerned with the interrelationship between stack sizes, and laddering, and exploiting and survival. Oftentimes actual hands were irrelevant, and ICM was totally seperate to Nash. Nash gave you your ranges for push/ fold from different positions and stack sizes. In high ICM spots ICM took precedence over anything Nash related.

The more I looked into it the more the lines became blurred. First off, my beloved push/fold chart of Nash ranges was conceived via an ICM calculator. SNGwiz is an ICM calculator. I began to scratch my head.

As I understand Nash equilibrium, within any game with a finite number of players who have at their disposal a finite number of strategic moves, there will exist a Nash equilibrium. My Nash push/fold chart is simply the most easily defined/ illuminated part of the solution. 

Am I now correct in thinking ICM and Nash are wholly related, and that even in a very high ICM spot it is Nash which will give you your ranges, even if they are 100%, and that an equilibrium runs through every situation? 

I would appreciate any assistance, I cannot find much illumination anywhere.

Hello Thomps…thank you for your reply. I will think about it and come back to you with some questions. But first off, are you some kind of maths guru? I saw your post on DouggyF’s algebra question…sorry for my flippant intervention there, I couldn’t resist. I must be honest, I am somewhat surprised with the seeming lack of GTO boffins on this site so far, although I have not explored the forum entirely. I have learned most of what I know via the Pokersnowie debacle, and researching around the GTO claims they were so heavily criticised for.

People here are probably rightfully unfamiliar with Pokersnowie; the only reason I am very familiar with the thing is because like a clueless fool I purchased it before realising it is a cash game tool. However, I have found some indispensable uses for it, and now I could never be without it…a) I warm up pre-sesh HU vs Snowie. b) When attempting to add a table to my regular schedule I start out by incorporating a Snowie table…obv. I can ignore it immediately if overwhelmed, and c) (Highly recommended for TPE’ers), if I am studying a TPE or other video I use Snowie to practise the practical applications of the theory. For example, when studying Brokos’s hand reading series I had my pen and paper out with the three categories, and tried reading Snowie’s hands; I was amazed at the accuracy of my predictions given enough time to think using Andrew’s methods (and yes, Snowie plays a balanced game with plenty of bluffs). I suppose you could use a play money table, but Snowie’s advantages are that it will wait for you forever if you need time thinking over a spot, and also it always gives you its “A” game. I cannot recommend the thing more highly for TPE’ers who want a good opponent to practise against.

However, Snowie was heavily criticised by GTO specialists for its claims as the perfect GTO engine. I won’t get into it but there are some fascinating threads out there, particularly on 2+2. Snowie’s CEO even makes an appearance. Initially, Snowie’s marketing was all about GTO. Now you look at their site and there is no mention of it whatsoever. I even asked Will Tipton about it and he said the same…however good the engine may or may not be, the GTO claim was a claim too far, and threatened making a great product look like a scam.

Anyway Thomps, sorry I went on there, pleased to make your acquaintance, we shall talk soon.

Right Joel! I was in Spain this summer and I came home just knowing there was a podcast I had2listen2, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember…nice1 for reminding me.

And to correct myself… whilst there are very interesting Pokersnowie discussions on 2+2, the most interesting discussions I found were in fact on DC. In fact all discussion of Snowie was banned on 2+2 for a while there. Even if you could care less about GTO or Snowie, do yourself a favour and Google “Time to learn PLO /deucescracked”. It is highly entertaining stuff. I believe it is about page 55 where the thread descends into pure open warfare.

Improva, sthief, blah234, RustyBrooks… guys who really know their stuff, got their knickers in a nuclear twist over Snowie. You can read the thread yourself, but what I took from it was the contention that Snowie did not need to be that good to really harm the (cash) games. Even if Snowie was nowhere near GTO, it could still devastate the games.

Well, in retrospect, it seems that the jury is in, at least for now… Snowie is not yet the GTO atom bomb it was feared to be. Whilst nobody knows what a NLHE GTO solution looks like yet, I still feel that Snowie’s programmers had the right idea when they came up with the idea of pitting the bot against itself over trillions of hands. This “brute force” method reminds me of how Will Tipton attempts to arrive at HU equilibrium in his first book…start with a strategy; exploit that strategy; find a way of exploiting the exploit…etc., eventually reaching an equilibrium where neither player can gain from changing strategy. However, it was argued that instead of arriving at a GTO solution, Snowie might in some instances simply arrive instead at local minima.

It makes me chuckle some when I hear folk on 2+2 or wherever worrying that poker will some day be “solved”. The question as asked is meaningless. NLHE is a game of incomplete information…it can never be “solved” as such. A better way of phrasing the question would be to ask instead whether enough players will become good enough that there is no longer significant money to be made from the game. I believe the answer to this is almost certainly “yes”, but luckily for us I feel that tournament poker will have the most longevity of the NLHE formats. I myself am transitioning from 180 man turbo SNG’s, where I have been a winning reg for a while now, to MTT’s, where I am as yet a big loser. The variance, and the skill set, and the knowledge level, and the ability to turn $22 into $16000 in four hours…possible even for a huge donk, means tournament NLHE has, in my estimation, an infinite life-span of profitability for a winning reg.

Thanks Andrew…I would like to take a moment and really thank you for the time and effort you put into your work on TPE. As a long distance trucker in the UK I have alot of time to listen to you…at the moment I literally have one of your series downloaded on my phone on repeat as I work for hours each day. Good stuff man…