The purpose of GTO play, in a nutshell, is to make yourself unbeatable. It isn't about winning the most money, it's about ensuring your opponent cannot, regardless of his play, beat you (unless you're playing in a game where he has an inherent advantage in which case your GTO approach limits his potential margin of victory).

Consider rock/paper/scissors - the GTO strategy for this game is very easy to work out: perfect randomization where you play each of the three symbols exactly 1/3 of the time. Using this strategy there is nothing an opponent can do to beat you. He will win 1/3 of hands, tie 1/3, and lose 1/3. There is no pattern he can exploit, no imbalance, nothing. However, you also can't win as you will also win, draw, and lose exactly 1/3 of the time.

Now imagine you played against a guy whose strategy was to play rock 100% regardless of history. An exploitative player could win here 100% of the time, but the GTO player would chop. This is what we are looking to achieve when we deviate from a GTO(ish) strategy in poker - we have found someone who is making huge mistakes which will perform worse against a strategy which isn't our GTO(ish) standard.

One last thing, I don't want you to think that GTO means we'll always break even as we do in rock/paper/scissors. Unlike that very simple game, there are some in which GTO will break even against another GTO approach but will beat sub-optimal strategies. Poker is one such game. Another would be rock/paper/scissors/fold. This game (which I just made up) is exactly the same as rock/paper/scissors except that you can choose to fold by which you guarantee a loss of 0.5 any loss you incur by picking the defeated option. Quite clearly folding is retarded (no reason to do it), however if you played someone who utilised the fold option, your GTO approach would show a profit.

Does that kind of explain the questions you have?

Note: You and I don't use the phrase "quick question" in the same way :p

Note 2: I say GTO(ish) 'cas no one in poker has gotten anywhere near a GTO strategy. The game is just too complex.

O i loved the fold option added to RPS Tom, just explains well usage of suboptimal strategies in poker and GTO profit of those, great example,

To add, midori, you can try watch newest bens vid, its on the subject of GTO and its applications, is called toy games

The purpose is to play a strategy that prevents an opponent from exploiting you.  Playing a "GTO strategy" guarantees that you get your due value from the game, regardless of what your opponent does.

There are some different ways in which this is expressed in the poker community.  Some call it optimal play, GTO play, nemesis or optimal strategy.  

I personally find this terminology confusing.  In game theory, this is generally called minimax.  In zero-sum games, the minimax solution is the same as the equilibrium point (or Nash equilibrium).  The equilibrium point is a stable game condition where neither player can improve by changing their strategy.

Against opponents who don't play the minimax strategy, a non-minimax strategy will generally be more profitable.  This is what people think of as exploitative play.  Note that this goes both ways.  In order to play exploitative, you also need to open yourself up to being exploited in return.  Also note that playing minimax means you always maximise your EV against a rational opponent.  In poker there is always a 0 EV option, so there's never a reason to play a hand in a -EV way.  (no loss leaders)

To bring this back to the K2o example, it comes back to how you would construct your flop ranges and how often you show up with certain types of hands.  And this will be related to the pot size and remaining stacks (for no limit or pot limit games).

As I understand it...

The answer to your question is that the 'ultimate purpose' of a GTO strategy is to play each hand in a way that maximises its EV against an opponent who plays perfectly against you.  That is, if raising K2o produces a higher EV than flatting, then you will always raise it.  If raising and calling both have equal EV, then you play a mixed strategy.

There's no such thing as a loss leader, because in an equilibrium strategy, neither play can unilaterally deviate to increase their EV.  So if c/r had a higher ev than c/c (against an opponent playing perfectly against your strategy), you could increase your ev by c/r K2o if the opponent's strategy remained static.

So assuming that c/c is the GTO strategy for playing K2o in that situation, and you decide that against a specific opponent c/r has a higher EV, that's because you're exploiting some specific tendency that pushes the ev of c/r over that of c/c.

If you could play perfect GTO, the only time you would deviate is when you identify some specific trait of your opponent that allows you to play some hand in a way that is higher EV than your GTO strategy (e.g. if an opponent folds too much to 3b, you can flat some of your stronger hands and 3b more hands you would normally fold).

It may be that the GTO strategy for playing K2o is to c/c in those particular circumstances against a perfect opponent.  

It may also be true that c/r K2o has a higher EV than c/c against basically all the opponents in your player pool.  This is because some part of their strategy is sub-optimal.

Midori 

reason to constriuct ranges based on  GTO strategy is that you become unexploitable, not to maximise your profits. Any deviation from this is not GTO anymore. This sound like not most profitable, but in reality it is. Reason why you base your range construction on GTO is, that if you deviate from it, you will have significant leaks that wil be open to counterexploatation by other players that wil make you significant losses, and thats where you actually see benefit of GTO based range construction.

Same goes with individual hand.

Anytime you chose to deviate from GTO and use exploitative strategy, you have to be aware it is open for counterexploatation. That doesn't mean you can't use exploitative strategy when u find it profitable. Thing is, you just need to be aware of upsides and downsides, and be sure you do know what you are doing.

Lets say you face tight player pool and decide to construct looser range, cause opening more and cbetting more should make a profit. Now, if you overdo it, players will notice and start 3 betting you wider, raising you more on flop, and there you get a consequence of not being balanced. On other hand, if you can get away with it unnoticed, you for sure can and should do it, but moment you start to be counter exploited you need to switch back to GTO. Same goes with playing a hand , if player is folding to 4 bet 90 percent you should start 4 betting him any 2 cards, of course, until he notices and do something about it.

Umm..i hope this helps u a bit in comprehending GTO and its benefits .

Thanks for your replies, guys.  It helped me greatly, and I agree with you for the most part.

One thing still bothers me, though.  In retrospect, I think I was more concerned about how putting one hand into a certain range would affect the EV of other hands that were already in that range.  For example, even if we know x/r'ing K2o is gonna be more +EV than x/c'ing it, can't we make other hands in x/c'ing range more profitably by adding K2o into it, i.e. strengthening our range?  Or is this a myth?

Something like this: 

Suppose we put hands A and B into x/r and x/c range, respectively.  The EV of these hands are +0.5bb and 0bb.  Now we move A from x/r to x/c range, and let's say the EV becomes +0.3bb and +0.3bb for both of them.  If this were possible at all, which one would be a better strategy?  

That is far too complicated question for as huge unsolved game as poker, i think. Loads of math, and you can get some perspective on answer on that 1

But question itself is exploitation question, not GTO one in its core, because GTO doesn't care whats more profitable, but is making u unexplainable against nemesis, so as such i don't think GTO can answer your question.

nm is good to see how much can we make our GTO pro;s laugh this year reading our ramble on subject