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(2 votes) 
September 3, 2018
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As I have been studying training videos, I have been leaning heavily on the pause button (meaning it takes twice as long to watch now versus when I first joined TPE). I am utilizing software from snapshove, pokerhandrange, propokertools and the TPE excel shove/call/resteal EV calculator. I am getting better at recognizing when to shove/call/resteal.
My question, though, has to do with determining whether villain is also playing proper poker. For example, if villain is a total nit then don’t you have to ease off the gas pedal a bit on calling his shoves? Conversely, if villain is a total maniac then don’t you have to adjust your shove/call/resteal ranges?
Or is optimal GTO play such that you use the charts regardless of how villain is playing?
I guess my question is, do you blindly follow optimal GTO play/charts when it comes to push/shove/resteal no matter what? Or do you have to adjust your use of a GTO approach based upon how your opponent is playing and changing gears?
I would think you have to modify your use of the GTO approach based upon how your opponent is playing, but I think I have read somewhere that the GTO approach is not exploitable.
My thinking right now is that snapshove software is fine for an opponent who is playing pretty straight forward GTO poker, but when you are dealing with an opponent who is either a nit or a maniac then you have to take a deeper dive and assign hand ranges to villain and plug it into software like the TPE excel document or the propokertools.com simulator.
Thoughts?
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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To say that an equilibrium shoving or calling range (which is roughly what Snap Shove provides) is not exploitable is not to say that it’s the most profitable strategy against a given opponent. It’s like this:
When you don’t know what mistake an opponent is likely to mistake, the best you can do is strive for an unexploitable strategy (this is why it’s called game theoretically OPTIMAL).
When you believe you can predict a mistake an opponent will likely mistake, then you can probably achieve higher EV than what an equilibrium strategy would achieve by crafting a strategy designed to exploit your opponent’s mistake.
July 24, 2018
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When it comes to open shoving per snap shove, I find that almost all Villains are calling too tightly, especially from the BB. That, however is somewhat balanced by (I assume) that snapshove is not counting for ICM, it is only giving you chip ev calculations.
I have only see one(!) surprising call from the BB that turned out to be nash approved, that was by Ryan Laplante. The rest of the world seems to be calling much tighter (myself included), which may well be correct, since player pools shove too tightly as well.
February 5, 2015
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I have been studying this stuff for years, and I still make elementary blunders in my thinking. A few months ago we were talking in a thread here. I was of the understanding that if villain is calling too wide our shoves, that we should add hands to our shove range. To give an example, if JJ is the base of our Nash shove range, and 77 is the bottom of villain’s Nash call range, if villain is calling too wide, say down to 44, that hero can add say TT and 99 to our shove range.
It makes sense from a hand equity point of view, but it turns out that if villain is calling too wide, hero needs to tighten up his range, because what we are losing precious is fold equity.
This is all super complicated stuff, but to answer your question, yes, if villain has moved away from GTO then you can and should move to exploit the deviation.
However, if villain moves away from GTO, and you keep playing GTO, you are not yourself exploitable. It is like a safe harbour, especially when playing against a superior opponent you dont feel you can outplay. But you are not maxing your EV against villain’s departure from GTO equilibrium.
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Nice post here, Rice. You’re getting the hang of this game theory stuff!
February 5, 2015
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Thanks Andrew, though 85% of what I have learned has come from yourself and Ginger! Where is he btw? Is he no longer at TPE?
3for3 said:
“The rest of the world seems to be calling much tighter (myself included), which may well be correct, since player pools shove too tightly as well.”
I expect the tendency is for most people to err on the side of shoving too tight, but I am darn sure the tendency is for most people to call way, way too tight. In fact I think it is probably one of the last great secrets in poker today, that people assume, without putting in the work with a Nash calculator, call ranges intuitively which are so far out on the tight side that those who do know appropriate Nash call ranges make a ton of money this way.
June 19, 2019
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I think that if we are attempting to play a GTO style and our opponent is not, we are leaving chips on the table. Opponents that are unbalanced in one direction or another just require an adjustment by our own strategy to reach a new equilibrium. My default strategy is to stay as balanced as a can when playing against unknowns and then making adjustments based on the information I receive from my opponents. As Riceman mentioned, this requires us to add/remove hands from our ranges based on the opponents in the hand or blinds. Recognize the situation and adjust accordingly.
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