Hi,

I havent played poker for almost ten years because of monkey-tilt issues, but i always loved the game. I was a good limit holdem 6max and HU-player and even considered making it a fulltime job. After depositing 300 $ at PokerHeaven i grinded up to 18 000 $ in five weeks, but lost all the bankroll one night, playing HU No-limit and Blackjack. I remember back then i read Limit Holdem by Terry Borer and Lawrence Mak, especially the opening ranges i found helpful. I also studied videos on CardRunners and BlueFire, but that was mainly no-limit. I guess the games were very soft back then compared to now. I was also fascinated watching the big names playing at FullTilt, for example a OMG ClayAiken vs Isildur multitable :) That was a bit about my background. Here are my questions:

1. I understand that GTO and solvers play a huge part of the game today. How has this changed who are the world`s best players? I would guess that strong intuitive players who dominated the game before will have a hard time beating a GTO- or pseudo-GTO-guy who is strong at math/logical thinking and who spend a lot of time with Pio.

2. I read that a university a few years ago developed a pokerprogram that crushed the best players of the world in HU No-limit. Who has access to this program now and how big of a chance is there that mutiple players have access to this program or a program of near this quality?

3. I am not very familiar with Pio apart from what i have seen from some videos here. How difficult would it be to one-table high stakes (or any stake) and put your hole cards and the flop, turn and river cards into Pio and just follow the strategies, randomizing for example using a clock? Wouldn`t that be an unbeatable style?

4. I would like to make poker one of my hobbies again among other things, for example tennis :) But playing is more funny when winning. How do you see the game of poker evolve the coming years?

My last note is a comment and advice to some younger guys i see make treads such as «Should i turn pro..?» One week before i dumped my bankroll ten years ago, mainly on blackjack on huge tilt from poker and stress in general, i was very, very close quitting medical school because poker was very appealing to me. When i look back at it, it would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. So i would heavily recommend taking education (and possibly combine it with poker).

Best regards
Conrad