excellent video man. first time I have watched any of your videos and will definitely continue to watch them from now on!
i'm just curious, what games do you usually play??
Nice video. This kind of topic is definitely one of the more difficult things for me in poker and I'm sure for many others as it's conflicting psychologically when it comes to defending.
I always called it "The GTO Virus". People dont see the bigger picture of the complexity of poker I feel and what we can consistently manage on average long-term as a "mere" human being.
Even if you made a gto bot and an exploit bot, the exploit bot would destroy every human for infinite more for sure. Then there's the thing of "feel players" being mocked by poker communities for quite a while now, pushing players further into solver only mode and no gut instincts allowed. It's as if we swear we must prepare to fight pio itself someday soon, and this is the only piece of the puzzle we need to get there, oblivious to the gap of pio+ poker and what humans are capable of maintaining at accurate frequencies with any long term consistency. Meanwhile their average opponent is making infinite mistakes, because they are human, and its your job to figure them out. I believe this has hindered our development of a very important aspect of poker. That is the psychology and intuition aspects. A "feel player" as one might put it. More on that later.
Story time!
Back in my day, this was a game of human vs human which everyone understood, limited and emotional as we are. It was fun. It was creative. I loved it. We must understand that no human plays anywhere close to solver perfect for no extended period of time without cheating, this should be obvious. "But this is the only way oatsy! All that feel player crap is BS, we must prepare to battle endboss pio!" I get it, it sucks to think you've possibly been sucked into an under examined software and used it incorrectly to varying degrees, negatively effecting your poker game overall and wasting time and money for many if not most. I don't deny that the very best use it well and it helps their games. That said, I still think what I have to say applies to you too.
If you dont play at least 500z on stars or the equivalent, I would avoid pio and focus on exploit, not even close. Stop wasting your money guys. We were sold a logically sounding product and made what could have been a poor assumption about it. It sounded perfect, learn to play UNEXPLOITABLE POKER. "That has to be the answer, cant get better than that!"," Nobody will ever be able to exploit me again!" We forget that we are limited humans in the process, with limited processing power, especially long-term and especially in such a long-term stressful and complex job as poker. Not only is pio only used well by the very best, and even they cannot consistently play anywhere near solver ranges long term in the infinite spots that occur within this complex game of ours. Then we all fail by about 99.4% due to the complexity of the game, and our lack of awareness of the more logical, likely reality here.
We must understand that this proves the psychological/exploitative aspect of poker, human vs human, will always be a large aspect of poker long term. Humans are emotional, stressed, impulsive, playing tired, on drugs etc etc. In my opinion a max exploit style while having a solidly balanced game tree vs the guys equal or better than you(especially at 200z+), is in my opinion a better strategy, bringing the solver in at 500z perhaps, and get immediate coaching. This is a human vs human game, I don't deny solvers help us understand things better and create better ranges, but in my opinion are way over relied on and overall damaging to most purchasers, had they been working on my recommendations instead.
Back to the "feel players". Dont get too excited!
Intuition/"feel" has been proven to be extremely powerful through science, feel free to go research, and in my opinion, learning to develop it and integrate it into your game would be extremely beneficial in a game this complex that will always involve a large psychology component, especially if you have a lot of poker experience, as there will be more information that your intuition to instantly navigate through for you.
To top 1% or less, my opinion is to simplify your game trees in as many spots as you feel is right without going overboard, continue to add and memorize your strategies and continue to grow these balanced as you can strategies in as many situations in poker as you can, in your own way, with the help of a solver. Humans just cant sustain these ridiculously complex game trees solvers suggest and humans attempt not nearly well enough consistently in game. If you are intelligent and have already had success in poker, I suggest a more logical, exploitative-rooted, intuitive/logical harmony based(learn to trust gut/build intuition) game, but beware of doing this vs very good players too much who may be for instance over-bluffing you when playing some of the best. The psychological warfare will always be there, with building game trees that are simplified but solidly protected through logic and solvers in as many spots as possible and that's a never ending process of growth. That is my opinion. (sorry for supa long post, just felt like writing it.)
oatsy I don't think anybody is naïve enough to think that using PIO will make them an unexploitable, GTO bot. but what it does do is to help us understand the game better, try to figure out why PIO bluffs with certain combinations but not with others, why PIO bets certain hands on the turn for protection/value but not others, why it likes to call down with certain combinations but not others.
for example, in a single raised pot we open KK and the flop comes xxx monotone all spades. our hand does not contain a spade, in the past (before solvers) if we chose to c bet the flop then we would bet the turn basically always on a safe non spade/A turn in order to 'protect our hand' as it doesn't contain a spade. however, what Snowie taught us is the opposite-we should be checking more often with the non spade combos and betting with the ones with a spade. simply because, whist our hand does need 'protection' such bad rivers only happen 25% of the time when we x back, and when we bet we completely unblock villains check-raising range of flushes/one card flush draws with a blocker like KsQx. and when a spade rolls off we cannot value bet KK no s and probably just lose the pot. where as we can x back and just snap off with vs bricked spade draws/straight draws etc.
for me, little revelations like this made me look at holdem on a whole new level. for some reason at the moment people seem to be saying GTO vs EXPLOITATIVE, but that is not the case. as you say, the best strategy is having a good understanding of GTO but just playing your best in each spot, and exploiting regs when necessary in order to increase your EV and avoid making large mistakes vs population/villain tendencies.
I don't see the need for the rant, solvers are helping people improve as poker players hugely, they are great. but nobody is claiming they play like, or even want to play 100% 'GTO.'
Hey Francesco! Could you please reduce the quality of your content? Otherwise you'll be promoted to Elite and I'll have to pay 99$ to keep learning from you.. Jokes aside, Great Video! Looking forward to more :)
Wasn't meant to be a rant, just wanted to hopefully help some newer players or people playing 10nl using pio or something have a better understanding of everything and when/why it should be applied. I assume we both agree on the subject(using a combo of logic/solvers to construct balanced well thought out ranges vs the better regs, as you suggested for the most part. The "people thinking they will actually become an unexploitable pio bot literally" seems to be an extreme take on what I said. I just meant, despite it being helpful for the best players in the world, it is only for the top people and those people should make sure they are using it correctly with coaching when/if they reach the stakes appropriate.
It was more the difference between what most solver players think they can study then maintain longterm in game, than the reality of it possibly doing more harm/confusion than good other than the elite players using it well. There are many pro's who mis-use and over-attempt to be solver-esque shall we say even in spots where there are clearly better exploitative decisions to be made. The perfect example is "top of range must call" type thinking vs msnl reg not capable of bluffing in this spot. Etc. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the situation, but those are my thoughts and I am happy to agree to disagree.
To quote your pio helping us understand theory/ranges better. It has the computing power of who knows how many human brains working instantly and perfectly. Often times humans are confused by the decisions pio decides to make, which can lead to the person feeling confused and dumb, when its really making that decision based on a million factors you're unaware of because of limited processing power in many cases, and we just guess why it might be doing what its doing, almost certainly often incorrectly. To think we can maintain consistent mixed ranges to the approximate pio suggestions, without the valuable tool of simplification to even a 10% degree, is provably correct I believe. Humans deceive themselves on a regular basis, I have seen countless videos where even someone like sauce or whoever are clearly using their hand's bias to make the decisions they make, instead of why this is a correct range play in this context and act like its "close to gto". Whats worse, is the many videos where they spend a ton of time going over a single hand history in pio, and see that it does this x% this x% etc, as if thats helping anyone in any significant way to keep repeating. There are some good videos though using it to find exploits on players, going over common situations from the most to least common, over single hand histories that don't lead to a valuable theory discussion.
The best players should try to implement the logical theoretical aspects we understand from solvers into our games and continue to grow using it in combination with our own experience and logic/intuition, never denied that. It's just that people seem to be way under estimating the combination of this style with the ability to exploit deviate vs weaker regs confidently and instead stick to our mapped out ranges vs most opponents too much and taking psychology and intuition out of it, which you didnt really address and was the root point of my post to begin with as too much left brain (solver) and not enough right brain (intuition) is not the best solution and missing the most important ingredient for great players, especially ones who are naturally intuitive. Think of all the times you followed pio advice only to be shown the nuts, or get called on your bluff or whatever the case is, and maybe you'll see what I mean.
Solvers are good if you're a smart crusher who knows how to implement it properly at the tables. The people who fall under this category are extremely limited in numbers worldwide. As in out of the billions of us, perhaps 500 of us or less should be using solvers, or something along those lines in the context they are in. The amount of people who bought pio and attempt to follow it likely far outweigh these numbers. Exploitative game play will bring higher win-rates when done correctly in most games on earth, with absolutely 0 consideration for solver play. When I see 2p2 posts about 10nl regs balancing their 4b bluffing range or pio hh questions, I feel bad that they have been so misguided to not only be playing raketrap games, but to also be ignorant enough to think solvers are the best way to defeat their fellow 50nl regs. Trust me, its not.
Lastly, as far as I can tell, we seem to agree on most things. I just genuinely wanted to express what I thought on the subject that is too rarely talked about and that I may or may not have some insights into, to perhaps bring in further discussion. Simply because it was a long post, shouldn't have it labeled as a rant in my opinion. Of course nobody thinks they will achieve perfect pio in game without cheating, but I just think the games complexity vs what we can take in and implement with consistency as a collective ego of the poker community, may need some further consideration and discussion, to allow us to not be almost "afraid" of intuition, proven to be a far superior intellect than our thought alone and when combined with our solver/theory etc knowledge can create truly great players. No hard feelings, feel free to respond to anything you disagree with. Take care.
it's hard to know where to start responding really, but i'll try as best as I can:
what you are saying is that PIO is useless, or not very helpful for most poker players. and I completely disagree. there is no scale that says you need to play x or y stake in order for this tool to be valuable to you and worth buying/using. that is simply your opinion/bias. you said about the fact that you should only buy PIO when playing 500z+, that's what I play but I would encourage people playing lower to buy it too in order to move out of the lower stakes games and to where the rake is lower and where the potential hourly rate is much higher.
I think you are misguided when you seem to believe that ANY poker player using PIO Solver thinks he/she is playing anything close to optimal, but that doesn't mean that the tool isn't useful and can increase their win rate substantially. I use it and 95% of the time or more I am probably playing nothing close to what PIO would do, but I just try to implement it in to my game as best as I can, whilst also deviating when required vs specific regs or vs population tendencies. and this is what basically every other reg at 500z does too, they will over-fold certain situations and under-bluff others.
just because PIO is so much more complex than what we are capable of understanding doesn't mean we should simply shrug our shoulders and avoid using it. I mean, if you want to you don't have to use it, but I would back any reg who is using it somewhat effectively to have the edge over you.
lets use kind of an extreme example. Phil Ivey was the best poker player for years, there is no doubting that. he didn't use any kind of software, hops in to games with OTB and Kanu who have done so for a couple of years at this point, and loses millions. is this merely a coincidence or just simply variance?? no. it was because he relied on his intuition and 'feel' and didn't feel any need to study. and got crushed for his complacency.
I don't understand all of this GTO bashing recently, nobody is forcing you to use Solvers, but that doesn't mean you should tell others to avoid using them. they are great, whether you agree with that or not is up to you. and nobody has said you should use PIO and never deviate/make large exploits, even Sauce says during videos about how he will make exploits in game, in he is probably one of the most GTO/math oriented players you will find.
use PIO AND make exploits. using only exploits will leave you getting crushed in tons of spots, and trying to focus only on PIO and on calling down on specific run outs withy a correct frequency will also lead to you getting crushed, due to under-bluffing tendencies etc, albeit, in my opinion, much less severely than pure exploit.
yeah, I can agree with most of that, and its pretty much what I advocated minus that certain skilled players shouldn't bother with pio until later. I could be wrong there, I am just thinking it will do them more harm than good. Interesting to think about though.
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excellent video man. first time I have watched any of your videos and will definitely continue to watch them from now on!
i'm just curious, what games do you usually play??
Thank you! I play 200 (only because there's not much action 400+)-400-600 and 1000 NL 6max and HU on pokerstars.it
Francesco Lacriola cool nice one. you could definitely play higher stakes based on your content I have watched thus far.
Nice video. This kind of topic is definitely one of the more difficult things for me in poker and I'm sure for many others as it's conflicting psychologically when it comes to defending.
I think everyone has struggled with this at least once in their poker career :)
I always called it "The GTO Virus". People dont see the bigger picture of the complexity of poker I feel and what we can consistently manage on average long-term as a "mere" human being.
Even if you made a gto bot and an exploit bot, the exploit bot would destroy every human for infinite more for sure. Then there's the thing of "feel players" being mocked by poker communities for quite a while now, pushing players further into solver only mode and no gut instincts allowed. It's as if we swear we must prepare to fight pio itself someday soon, and this is the only piece of the puzzle we need to get there, oblivious to the gap of pio+ poker and what humans are capable of maintaining at accurate frequencies with any long term consistency. Meanwhile their average opponent is making infinite mistakes, because they are human, and its your job to figure them out. I believe this has hindered our development of a very important aspect of poker. That is the psychology and intuition aspects. A "feel player" as one might put it. More on that later.
Story time!
Back in my day, this was a game of human vs human which everyone understood, limited and emotional as we are. It was fun. It was creative. I loved it. We must understand that no human plays anywhere close to solver perfect for no extended period of time without cheating, this should be obvious. "But this is the only way oatsy! All that feel player crap is BS, we must prepare to battle endboss pio!" I get it, it sucks to think you've possibly been sucked into an under examined software and used it incorrectly to varying degrees, negatively effecting your poker game overall and wasting time and money for many if not most. I don't deny that the very best use it well and it helps their games. That said, I still think what I have to say applies to you too.
If you dont play at least 500z on stars or the equivalent, I would avoid pio and focus on exploit, not even close. Stop wasting your money guys. We were sold a logically sounding product and made what could have been a poor assumption about it. It sounded perfect, learn to play UNEXPLOITABLE POKER. "That has to be the answer, cant get better than that!"," Nobody will ever be able to exploit me again!" We forget that we are limited humans in the process, with limited processing power, especially long-term and especially in such a long-term stressful and complex job as poker. Not only is pio only used well by the very best, and even they cannot consistently play anywhere near solver ranges long term in the infinite spots that occur within this complex game of ours. Then we all fail by about 99.4% due to the complexity of the game, and our lack of awareness of the more logical, likely reality here.
We must understand that this proves the psychological/exploitative aspect of poker, human vs human, will always be a large aspect of poker long term. Humans are emotional, stressed, impulsive, playing tired, on drugs etc etc. In my opinion a max exploit style while having a solidly balanced game tree vs the guys equal or better than you(especially at 200z+), is in my opinion a better strategy, bringing the solver in at 500z perhaps, and get immediate coaching. This is a human vs human game, I don't deny solvers help us understand things better and create better ranges, but in my opinion are way over relied on and overall damaging to most purchasers, had they been working on my recommendations instead.
Back to the "feel players". Dont get too excited!
Intuition/"feel" has been proven to be extremely powerful through science, feel free to go research, and in my opinion, learning to develop it and integrate it into your game would be extremely beneficial in a game this complex that will always involve a large psychology component, especially if you have a lot of poker experience, as there will be more information that your intuition to instantly navigate through for you.
To top 1% or less, my opinion is to simplify your game trees in as many spots as you feel is right without going overboard, continue to add and memorize your strategies and continue to grow these balanced as you can strategies in as many situations in poker as you can, in your own way, with the help of a solver. Humans just cant sustain these ridiculously complex game trees solvers suggest and humans attempt not nearly well enough consistently in game. If you are intelligent and have already had success in poker, I suggest a more logical, exploitative-rooted, intuitive/logical harmony based(learn to trust gut/build intuition) game, but beware of doing this vs very good players too much who may be for instance over-bluffing you when playing some of the best. The psychological warfare will always be there, with building game trees that are simplified but solidly protected through logic and solvers in as many spots as possible and that's a never ending process of growth. That is my opinion. (sorry for supa long post, just felt like writing it.)
oatsy I don't think anybody is naïve enough to think that using PIO will make them an unexploitable, GTO bot. but what it does do is to help us understand the game better, try to figure out why PIO bluffs with certain combinations but not with others, why PIO bets certain hands on the turn for protection/value but not others, why it likes to call down with certain combinations but not others.
for example, in a single raised pot we open KK and the flop comes xxx monotone all spades. our hand does not contain a spade, in the past (before solvers) if we chose to c bet the flop then we would bet the turn basically always on a safe non spade/A turn in order to 'protect our hand' as it doesn't contain a spade. however, what Snowie taught us is the opposite-we should be checking more often with the non spade combos and betting with the ones with a spade. simply because, whist our hand does need 'protection' such bad rivers only happen 25% of the time when we x back, and when we bet we completely unblock villains check-raising range of flushes/one card flush draws with a blocker like KsQx. and when a spade rolls off we cannot value bet KK no s and probably just lose the pot. where as we can x back and just snap off with vs bricked spade draws/straight draws etc.
for me, little revelations like this made me look at holdem on a whole new level. for some reason at the moment people seem to be saying GTO vs EXPLOITATIVE, but that is not the case. as you say, the best strategy is having a good understanding of GTO but just playing your best in each spot, and exploiting regs when necessary in order to increase your EV and avoid making large mistakes vs population/villain tendencies.
I don't see the need for the rant, solvers are helping people improve as poker players hugely, they are great. but nobody is claiming they play like, or even want to play 100% 'GTO.'
Thank you. I'm looking forward to your content a great deal.
Hey Francesco! Could you please reduce the quality of your content? Otherwise you'll be promoted to Elite and I'll have to pay 99$ to keep learning from you.. Jokes aside, Great Video! Looking forward to more :)
Wasn't meant to be a rant, just wanted to hopefully help some newer players or people playing 10nl using pio or something have a better understanding of everything and when/why it should be applied. I assume we both agree on the subject(using a combo of logic/solvers to construct balanced well thought out ranges vs the better regs, as you suggested for the most part. The "people thinking they will actually become an unexploitable pio bot literally" seems to be an extreme take on what I said. I just meant, despite it being helpful for the best players in the world, it is only for the top people and those people should make sure they are using it correctly with coaching when/if they reach the stakes appropriate.
It was more the difference between what most solver players think they can study then maintain longterm in game, than the reality of it possibly doing more harm/confusion than good other than the elite players using it well. There are many pro's who mis-use and over-attempt to be solver-esque shall we say even in spots where there are clearly better exploitative decisions to be made. The perfect example is "top of range must call" type thinking vs msnl reg not capable of bluffing in this spot. Etc. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the situation, but those are my thoughts and I am happy to agree to disagree.
To quote your pio helping us understand theory/ranges better. It has the computing power of who knows how many human brains working instantly and perfectly. Often times humans are confused by the decisions pio decides to make, which can lead to the person feeling confused and dumb, when its really making that decision based on a million factors you're unaware of because of limited processing power in many cases, and we just guess why it might be doing what its doing, almost certainly often incorrectly. To think we can maintain consistent mixed ranges to the approximate pio suggestions, without the valuable tool of simplification to even a 10% degree, is provably correct I believe. Humans deceive themselves on a regular basis, I have seen countless videos where even someone like sauce or whoever are clearly using their hand's bias to make the decisions they make, instead of why this is a correct range play in this context and act like its "close to gto". Whats worse, is the many videos where they spend a ton of time going over a single hand history in pio, and see that it does this x% this x% etc, as if thats helping anyone in any significant way to keep repeating. There are some good videos though using it to find exploits on players, going over common situations from the most to least common, over single hand histories that don't lead to a valuable theory discussion.
The best players should try to implement the logical theoretical aspects we understand from solvers into our games and continue to grow using it in combination with our own experience and logic/intuition, never denied that. It's just that people seem to be way under estimating the combination of this style with the ability to exploit deviate vs weaker regs confidently and instead stick to our mapped out ranges vs most opponents too much and taking psychology and intuition out of it, which you didnt really address and was the root point of my post to begin with as too much left brain (solver) and not enough right brain (intuition) is not the best solution and missing the most important ingredient for great players, especially ones who are naturally intuitive. Think of all the times you followed pio advice only to be shown the nuts, or get called on your bluff or whatever the case is, and maybe you'll see what I mean.
Solvers are good if you're a smart crusher who knows how to implement it properly at the tables. The people who fall under this category are extremely limited in numbers worldwide. As in out of the billions of us, perhaps 500 of us or less should be using solvers, or something along those lines in the context they are in. The amount of people who bought pio and attempt to follow it likely far outweigh these numbers. Exploitative game play will bring higher win-rates when done correctly in most games on earth, with absolutely 0 consideration for solver play. When I see 2p2 posts about 10nl regs balancing their 4b bluffing range or pio hh questions, I feel bad that they have been so misguided to not only be playing raketrap games, but to also be ignorant enough to think solvers are the best way to defeat their fellow 50nl regs. Trust me, its not.
Lastly, as far as I can tell, we seem to agree on most things. I just genuinely wanted to express what I thought on the subject that is too rarely talked about and that I may or may not have some insights into, to perhaps bring in further discussion. Simply because it was a long post, shouldn't have it labeled as a rant in my opinion. Of course nobody thinks they will achieve perfect pio in game without cheating, but I just think the games complexity vs what we can take in and implement with consistency as a collective ego of the poker community, may need some further consideration and discussion, to allow us to not be almost "afraid" of intuition, proven to be a far superior intellect than our thought alone and when combined with our solver/theory etc knowledge can create truly great players. No hard feelings, feel free to respond to anything you disagree with. Take care.
it's hard to know where to start responding really, but i'll try as best as I can:
what you are saying is that PIO is useless, or not very helpful for most poker players. and I completely disagree. there is no scale that says you need to play x or y stake in order for this tool to be valuable to you and worth buying/using. that is simply your opinion/bias. you said about the fact that you should only buy PIO when playing 500z+, that's what I play but I would encourage people playing lower to buy it too in order to move out of the lower stakes games and to where the rake is lower and where the potential hourly rate is much higher.
I think you are misguided when you seem to believe that ANY poker player using PIO Solver thinks he/she is playing anything close to optimal, but that doesn't mean that the tool isn't useful and can increase their win rate substantially. I use it and 95% of the time or more I am probably playing nothing close to what PIO would do, but I just try to implement it in to my game as best as I can, whilst also deviating when required vs specific regs or vs population tendencies. and this is what basically every other reg at 500z does too, they will over-fold certain situations and under-bluff others.
just because PIO is so much more complex than what we are capable of understanding doesn't mean we should simply shrug our shoulders and avoid using it. I mean, if you want to you don't have to use it, but I would back any reg who is using it somewhat effectively to have the edge over you.
lets use kind of an extreme example. Phil Ivey was the best poker player for years, there is no doubting that. he didn't use any kind of software, hops in to games with OTB and Kanu who have done so for a couple of years at this point, and loses millions. is this merely a coincidence or just simply variance?? no. it was because he relied on his intuition and 'feel' and didn't feel any need to study. and got crushed for his complacency.
I don't understand all of this GTO bashing recently, nobody is forcing you to use Solvers, but that doesn't mean you should tell others to avoid using them. they are great, whether you agree with that or not is up to you. and nobody has said you should use PIO and never deviate/make large exploits, even Sauce says during videos about how he will make exploits in game, in he is probably one of the most GTO/math oriented players you will find.
use PIO AND make exploits. using only exploits will leave you getting crushed in tons of spots, and trying to focus only on PIO and on calling down on specific run outs withy a correct frequency will also lead to you getting crushed, due to under-bluffing tendencies etc, albeit, in my opinion, much less severely than pure exploit.
yeah, I can agree with most of that, and its pretty much what I advocated minus that certain skilled players shouldn't bother with pio until later. I could be wrong there, I am just thinking it will do them more harm than good. Interesting to think about though.
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