Appologies in advance, but this will be bit of a read but I would appreciate some of you taking the time to give you thoughts.

First a little background of where I am at moment.

As mentioned in a previous thread, at this point I am primarily playing live cash games (1/2 for the time being). I was playing a little of the micros online but lost interest as I don't play using software (don't play on a pc or laptop) and feel this puts me at a bit of a disadvantage. But I actually do enjoy going to play live when I do get the chance (which is only once every few weeks at his point) and spend my time in between revisiting and discussing key hands, and play in general. With this in mind, my questions are focused around live play, primarily 1/2.

I find that in these 1/2 games most of the older regs play a fairly straightforward strategy and often make questionable descisions and in this way I think many people could say that a lot of players in these games have an exploitable strategy. For example, some play fit-or-fold post flop, may not bluff very often if at all, or they will call down with a worse hand "because they had to see it", and so-forth. There are more examples, but basically leaks that many of us would try to eliminate if we look at our own game.

On the flip side there are some players; often younger, who aren't quite as straightforward in their play. Of course, they are a little trickier to play against and obviously have a more refined strategy.

So i find at this level there seems to be generally 2 different groups of players, though the "older straight forward regs" seem to out number the the other players. (More on this as I get to my questions further down in the post.)

Having said that, I am always looking to trying to improve my game, plug any leaks and make it more difficult for others to play against. I am constantly trying to learn in order to do so. I will mention that this is the first year I have been playing live and the first year that I have spent a good amount of spare time (when possible) reading and studying in a serious way away from the table. I suppose you could say that I have only been serious about poker since the new year, but I feel that I have learned a lot in this amount of time as poker has become my passion.

I feel that I have built a decent foundation by sticking a good and fairly tight fre-flop strategy which has certainly helped, and now I am beginning to look at some more advanced (for me) ideas lately (such as ranges-polarized vs. Linear, bet sizing, and various other game theory type things).

I have no doubt that these things will improve my overall play and understanding and help me against the tougher opponents especially should I ever move up, play in tougher games or even look to play online again.

So getting back to what I touched on above, my first question is:

In the kind of games I am playing will a lot of this stuff (game theory) be lost in mix and not needed against many of these players for these types of games?

For example, is a polarized or balanced range really necessary against players that mostly play their own cards vs the board, or those who often split their range by limping with weak hands raising strong hands? (Just an example)

I guess I am trying to figure out if some of the game theory thinking is effective against players who clearly are not playing an optimal strategy themselves? Or is it a case of deciding how to play depending on our opponent(s) and the way they play? I know that playing a gto strategy makes us less exploitable but against these players is it not better to exploit their strategy?

I was looking at Matthew Janda's recent book (No Limit Hold'em for Avanced Players) and I was hoping that someone might have read it and could tell me if this would set me on the right path for further educating me in these game theory ideas and if these ideas would help in the games I play now or might want to play in the future?

I have no doubt that these things will help me to hopefully identify and plug some of the leaks in my game but I am concerned that these strategies may not be optimal against more exploitable strategies.

I hope some of you with much more experience than me could shed some light on this and give me some advice to help me out.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long post and for giving me your thoughts and advice.

Cheers.