At CrushLivePoker, Bart Hanson and company are focused on bringing you the tools to do just that. In their full-length Crushing Live NL Hold’em (2023 and Beyond) course, green and experienced players both are provided the fundamentals of attacking the felt exploitatively and with a foundation of game theory optimal fundamentals. Let’s dive into what this expansive course has to offer.

Crushing Live NL Hold’Em Overview

Make no mistake, this course will keep you busy. Clocking in at over 50 hours of content, this course is split into six modules with nearly 80 lessons in all. Modules available include Basic Concepts, Definitive Guide to Small Stakes Exploits, Winning at the Low Stakes, Continuation Betting, Winning at the High and Upper Mid Stakes, and Intermediate Concepts. While the range of materials targets a wide range of live players, the entire course has merit no matter your experience level. Whether you are a grizzled veteran or not, each module offers over 6.5 hours of content to explore.

No matter the module, this course is built around getting value and making exploits. There are areas that focus on the game theory optimal (GTO) fundamentals, but Crush Live Poker’s NLH course is uniquely focused on using that base of knowledge to identify your opponent’s playing style and extract the most value possible.

The course is split between video and audio presentations. There is a slight lean toward audio, and those lessons typically come equipped with PDFs that summarize the discussion from lesson to lesson. These PDFs are more of a reference than intended for taking in the information initially. I would recommend consuming the content as intended first throughout. As a primarily visual learner, I found the audio lessons to still be helpful and consumable. Anyone familiar with CrushLivePoker’s YouTube content will feel right at home as a listener here.

If you are a live poker player, or are looking to start, I can make it simple upfront: you are going to like this course. Online players will find live exploits that are far different than their typical expectations online. CLP’s course does a great job of bridging that gap and explaining when and why the deviations from GTO play are necessary. There is no doubt that the course provides plenty of value in making the transition to the live realm.

Best of all, Cardplayer Lifestyle can offer you an exclusive discount on purchasing the course, as you’ll get 20% off the price (i.e., a savings of up to $10 off/month or $100 off/year) by registering through any of the links in this review article.

Let’s dive into the individual sections for a deeper look at what is being offered.

Basic Concepts (13 Lessons, 9 hours)

This course wastes no time throwing users right into the action, beginning with basic concepts for beating live poker. Clocking in at just over 9 hours, you can watch this section and feel familiar with old wisdom and adages in the live poker environment.

The Basic Concepts section does focus on common truths, you will need prior experience playing poker in order to absorb the information. Bart and the Crush Live Poker team start with situations that any player will recognize. But the lessons are told through the lens of hand histories and veteran poker lingo that will require some level of  experience to understand.

Instead of teaching you how to play poker, this section focuses on teaching you to play good exploitative poker. Sections on equity, preflop theory, and common leaks in live poker aim to open an experienced player’s eyes to ways the best players are evaluating their opponents and taking advantage of them. This culminates in the Epic Guide to Preflop, a four part audio lesson series that ties everything together through the last three hours or so of this section.

Audio lessons are available in the CrushLivePoker dashboard, accompanied by Lesson Overview documents for review.

Preflop play is so essential in any form of poker, and I love that this course emphasizes its importance. The lessons work to teach solid fundamentals like playing tight and aggressive against early position opens, linear 3-betting against players that never fold, etc. while also finding opportunities to exploit them. Given that preflop is the most solved, scientific street of poker, Bart and company have done an excellent job of breaking down the textbook fundamentals and teaching players to recognize when it is time to color outside the lines.

Lessons include:

• Why So Much (Old School Still True) (22:44 Audio)
• Betting Volume; Why So Much Revisited (41:58 Video)
• Revisited New School Preflop Thoughts (53:17 Audio)
• Common Leaks in Live Poker (50:03 Video)
• 5th Street Chicken Revisited (51:38 Audio)
• Depolarization Revisited (44:38 Audio)
• Why Suited Hands Are Better (35:24 Audio)
• Equity Math (45:56 Audio)
• A Simple Way to Look at the Math of Draws and Implied Odds (34:45 Audio)
• Epic Guide to Preflop Part 1 (48:43 Audio)
• Epic Guide to Preflop Part 2 (38:03 Audio)
• Epic Guide to Preflop Part 3 (36:04 Audio)
• Epic Guide to Preflop Part 4 (38:16 Audio)

Definitive Guide to Small Stakes Exploits (10 Lessons, 6.5 hours)

For many users, I imagine this section of the course will be your bread and butter. Have you ever played low-stakes live cash in a casino, looked around the table and asked, “How am I not up piles right now?” Then this is the section for you. Crush Live Poker’s Guide to Small Stakes Exploits is a crash course in taking the most recognizable low-stakes characters to Value Town.

This is your guide to getting paid by the player that can’t fold the top pair, that is ready to go home, etc. Making bets that are meant to look bluffy, catering to the type of player that just has to see. It’s the foundation that Bart Hanson’s live call-in show is built on, and he proves his expertise all throughout this section.

Some of my favorite exploits include double barrelling vs. weak calling ranges, overfolding later streets to raises, and isolating players for heads up pots. I won’t share all of the exploits here, but this is an area where I feel the course excels. My one nitpick is that I do wish that this section had video elements. Physical live tells come up often at low stakes, and I think it would be beneficial to point out key visual elements during these hands as well.

Lessons include:

• Intro to Small Stakes Exploits Guide (28:44 Audio)
• Exploits 1-3 (39:58 Audio)
• Exploits 4-6 (45:05 Audio)
• Exploits 7-9 (47:20 Audio)
• Exploits 10-12 (44:49 Audio)
• Exploit 13 (56:08 Audio)
• Exploit 14 (21:23 Audio)
• Exploits 15-16 (40:52 Audio)
• Exploits 17-19 (31:13 Audio)
• Exploits 20-22 (43:20 Audio)

WINNING at the Low Stakes (11 Lessons, 11.75 hours)

It’s like the Crush Live Poker team could read my mind. In this section, the course takes a full turn into video analysis.

With nearly 12 hours of video content, the course is dead set on showing you exactly what they meant with their previous exploits section. It’s nice to take a turn to real live stakes action that we can watch and see play out for ourselves. While I would have loved to see more video content spliced into the previous section, it makes sense to have these situations learned through audio first. Learning to recognize the broad situations and mechanics, before you read a specific player, is almost a solver-like approach to learning to exploit in poker.

This section does a wonderful job of demonstrating common low stakes player mindsets. In this example, Bart Hanson examines the dynamics at play when your opponent is check-raising your river bet with far from the nuts

This section’s focus on a play and explain video style will be a welcome sight to many users that need a break from concepts and textbook learning. Watching Bart and others play at low stakes will provide a relatable element that can draw anyone in whose poker mind may have begun to wander. Covering many common spots like loose tables, bet sizing, and 3-bet pots, these situations will be familiar to any avid player watching.

Lessons include:

• Back to Basics in a Small Stakes Cash Game (1:04:53 Video)
• Bart Plays a Loose Live Game Part 1 (1:10:36 Video)
• Bart Plays a Loose Live Game Part 2 (1:04:05 Video)
• Bet Sizing Errors at Low Stakes (1:00:08 Video)
• Run Don’t Walk to Jacksonville (1:09:18 Video)
• Low Stakes Bet Sizing Shotgun (57:01 Video)
• Post Flop Play in 3 Bet Pots (Low Stakes) (56:29 Video)
• Post Flop Play in 3 Bet Pots (Low Stakes) Part 2 (58:24 Video)
• Jacksonville Small Stakes Series Part 1 (1:03:52 Video)
• Jacksonville Small Stakes Series Part 2 (1:08:23 Video)
• Jacksonville Small Stakes Series Part 3 (1:13:55 Video)

Continuation Betting (9 Lessons, 7.5 hours)

Now halfway through the course, things begin to take a turn toward the more advanced concepts. As stated earlier, the preflop street is a bit more scientific. It’s a street that is intricate but able to be mastered given the time and practice. Combine those skills with exploitative adjustments and you can become quite a menace before the flop. But continuation betting adds layers of complexity that the Crush Live Poker team unravels across this 7.5 hour section.

This section is built on a situational foundation that all NL players can recognize: going multiway to the flop as the initial raiser and missing. One of the common things any solid player learns early on is that attacking postflop, even without connecting, is key to earning chips. It’s too hard to make a hand, so you cannot depend on running pure. But here, Hanson lays out what he refers to as his Cbet Bluff Matrix of guiding principles to decide if a c-bet is well-timed. These seven considerations range from the number of players in the pot, their skill level, board textures and more, all of which is broken down in detail across two audio episodes. This is followed up by a video of examples from Hustler Casino Live that shows the thinking in action.

Hanson weighs his options out of position as the preflop raiser with two disconnected overcards, offering his thinking and commentary for course users.]

The later lessons in this section are audio heavy but extremely detailed, covering a variety of flops and situations. I would highly recommend following along with the lesson guides to visualize the situation easily. With that in mind, this section is among the best content in the course. Preflop is the foundation of any good poker play, but building your ability as a postflop player will take you far ahead of your competition in most poker rooms. This course’s dedication to the importance of c-betting is a highlight that should not be missed.

This section gets a bit more advanced. I feel like finding preflop 3bets for value and as bluffs, and c-betting certain flops lay the groundwork for good experienced players. Finding your barrels is a skill that separates good players from great players. Here, the course dives deep on this concept from a variety of angles. This is one of the most impressive sections of the course to this point and I would highly recommend it for any players that feel uncomfortable bluffing on later streets.

Lessons include:

• Cbet Bluff Matrix (50:07 Audio)
• Cbet Bluffing Matrix Revisited (54:59 Audio)
• Bart’s Cbet Cusps Hands (1:02:05 Video)
• Cbetting Ultra Multiway (44:50 Audio)
• Cbetting 3 Bet Pots (27:08 Audio)
• Cbet Structuring in Single Raised Pots Part 1 (39:48 Audio)
• Cbet Structuring in Single Raised Pots Part 2 (51:01 Audio)
• Cbet Structuring in Single Raised Pots Part 3 (1:07:36 Audio)
• Cbetting the Unclear Hands and Finding Your Bluffs (58:34 Video)

WINNING at the High and Upper Stakes (9 Lessons, 8.25 hours)

Now is the time to start reaching for every player’s dreams: playing at the high stakes and raking in massive pots against stiff competition. While the highs may be alluring, it is a different playing field than low stakes players will be used to. This section prepares those that have mastered the low stakes fundamentals for the challenges ahead.

Here is where the course really starts to come full circle. In a poker landscape still caught up in debate over GTO vs Feel Play, CrushLivePoker recognizes that the answer is always situational. Having a solver baseline to default to is key. The best players in the world live and breathe this approach. But even intermediate players at your local cardroom will understand the basics. Having a strong counter to these opponents is essential. What the team does so well here is recognize that you will not be playing that player type consistently. Using solver based play to your advantage and exploiting it is a great way to get ahead of your toughest opponents while still crushing the fish at your tables.

Marc Goone offers solver analysis during his play-by-play recap of a 4-bet pot on Hustler Casino Live.]

With a variety of dense topics like 4-bet pots, changing playing style based on opponents, and firing that huge bluff, the course leans back into video lessons for this entire section. It’s a wise choice, as most users will begin watching as beginner to intermediate players. In earlier sections, audio lessons work because the subject matter is familiar enough to come across clearly in conversation. But here, the team understands that they are training players to go to war in battles they aren’t used to fighting. Getting detailed breakdowns of these situations with play-by-play video analysis is a much appreciated creative direction from this part of the course.

No matter your skill level, I believe any player has a lot to gain from this leg of the course.

Lessons include:

• Why GTO Wins Big Even in Soft Lineups (48:57 Video)
• How to Max Exploit Using a Solver (40:52 Video)
• How to Play 4bet Pots: A Primer (47:42 Video)
• Playing Disrespectfully vs a Fish (43:32 Video)
• Pulling the Trigger on Huge Bluffs (59:19 Video)
• Playing as Mariano on HCL (50:05 Video)
• Ki Shotgun 25-50 NL (1:09:49 Video)
• To GTO or Not GTO (49:59 Video)
• Bart’s 10-20-40 NL Leak Finder (1:27:37 Video)

Intermediate Concepts (8 Lessons, 7 hours)

It’s funny to talk about nearly seven hours of content as the quick outro, but in the final content section, we start to see CrushLivePoker tie up some loose ends.

The Intermediate Concepts section is a mixed bag of tools that need to be in competitive player’s arsenals. That is the closest connecting thread between these concepts, as each lesson examines a distinct area of play from the others. Here you will learn about challenging concepts like overbetting, recognizing scare cards, and compile a full checklist for recognizing opponent types.

Instructor Rob Farha examines key components to a hand that influence his decision to overbet a significant pot

Each lesson is thorough, typically closer to an hour in length. As we near the end of this course, it is hard not to see this as the taste of what is still to come for those hoping to advance their game further. Intermediate Concepts feels like a great sampler platter of poker lessons meant to tease out what may be available in a future advanced level course. These are great introductions to tougher concepts, and I would be interested to see how they expand on these areas should they choose to in the future.

Lessons include:

• Big Blind vs PFR Single Raised Pot (57:11 Video)
• Hand Composition (59:53 Video)
• A Look at Overbetting (56:59 Video)
• What is a Scare Card? (40:54 Audio)
• Pot Odds in Practice (1:08:24 Video)
• Noticing Opponents: A Checklist (16:10 Audio)
• Power of Next to Act (57:33 Video)
• On Continuing (56:15 Video)

Conclusion

Over 50 hours of content later, was it all worth it?

Poker is a complex game, but it does not require players to practice or study. People can freely play at their own risk, gamble it up and win or lose. Ultimately, it is the players who put a lot of time and work into their play that win consistently.

If you are a player that prefers live poker, you likely are familiar with a lot of things discussed here. The typical cast of player types. Bet sizings that should sound alarms. Multiway action on many flops. But if you want to take this game seriously, whether as a hobby or profession, this is a great place to begin to hone your skills. Plus, by clicking through our exclusive discount links anywhere in this article, 20% off will automatically be applied at checkout for a savings of up to $10 off/month or $100 off/year.

As someone that admires the highest level of poker play and has aimed to study like those pros in the past, I really appreciate this course’s focus on getting value at a variety of attainable stakes for the common player. We can all learn a lot trying to play like the best. But your time is almost certainly put to better use learning how to exploit the everyman. Crushing Live No Limit Hold’Em has made this idea its namesake, and this course lives up to the task.

Completing this course felt like a journey from interested hobbyist to fully capable opponent. The content is delivered in a way that players with any level of experience can relate to and learn from quickly. As long as you are looking to play in casinos, or in person with your friends, I think this course is a perfect place for you to start your journey learning the ins and outs of live poker.

Let’s see if you have it.

You are playing a WPT event in Choctaw, Oklahoma, and you look down at K-To. The two players to your left are excellent at their craft, but they’re talking. Are they distracted? The player in the big blind has been playing loose and somewhat passive the entire day. Can you get to him?

You open large, like you’re some inexperienced satellite winner who is normally a nit in cash games. You do this because you can get away with it. You haven’t played a pot in your first several orbits.

The talented players to your left fold after some consideration. Small miracle. They have been 3-betting everyone and anyone all day.

It comes around to the loose player in the big blind. He calls quickly.

The board comes Q-T-5 rainbow. He checks to you. You bet. He calls.

The turn is an offsuit 4. He checks to you. What do you do here?

Let’s say you bet. He hesitates for a few seconds, and then he calls.

The river is an offsuit 4. He checks to you again. What do you do here?

This is where I go absolutely ballistic.

You Must Play to Win

The entire point of No Limit Hold’em is to take the other player’s chips. If you are in a situation where you are likely to have the best hand but you do not put the pedal to the metal, then you are not playing to win.

This guy tipped his hand strength. Did you catch it? It was plain as day.

I can’t tell you how many poker players I work with who check river there 100% of the time. Even when their opponent is not good enough to know what hands need to be turned into bluffs. Even when their opponent is calling too much. Even when their opponent is so unbalanced they’re begging to be exploited.

You’re trying to be unexploitable right? That’s your line.

You cannot exploit others without being exploitable yourself.

There is not a GTO practitioner alive who is incapable of exploitation. If they’re playing a nosebleed cash game and some drunk wanders in they’re not going to play their normal GTO style. If the drunk is calling literally every single bet they put out there then they will eliminate their bluffing range and expand their value betting range. It’s how technicians profit.

READ MORE: Book Review – Exploitative Play in Live Poker

That’s an obvious example of when exploitation is possible. In the real world, with more shades of gray, we will need to be focused to find opportunities to get more money.

That hand above is a real hand I played. It was a glaring example of when to exploit another player. The hand begged for three streets of betting.

As a poker player, 90% of your job is game selection. If you can find recreational players to play against then the whole game becomes exploiting them to the maximum. Playing a bunch of satellite winners in Oklahoma falls under the header of “maximum exploitation.”

Most recreational players call too much out of the big blind regardless of your raise size. He could have T-6o here or T-2s. He has tons of junk you can get value from.

The average recreational player is incapable of turning a hand into a bluff on the turn and river. I’ve done more private poker lessons than anyone I’ve ever met in the industry. I’d estimate perhaps 10% of recreational players can turn a hand into a bluff, and they typically only do that when they’re tilted about something else.

Could he check-raise you and make your life hell? Sure. But you probably just ran into a better hand if that happens.

He could be check-raise bluffing, of course. But you shouldn’t look for it. You shouldn’t make plans around it. That would be akin to a Major League Baseball hitter going up to the plate looking for a pitch the pitcher throws only 10% of the time. The hitter has a better chance if he focuses on the other pitches.

More importantly, this guy tipped his hand. When he hesitated on the turn that meant he likely didn’t have a queen. Recreational players don’t fold top pair to the second bet, ever. They almost feel as if they’re trapping. If he genuinely hesitates on that turn, he is letting you know your good pair with a good kicker is solid most of the time. Once in a while he will be a squeamish guy with a weak top pair but the odds are now in your favor.

The Consequences of Exploitative Poker Play

In the real hand, I value bet the river. The big blind called. I tabled my hand and it was good.

I later lost some big pots in the same tournament. The only chips I had left were the chips I earned in this hand. I ran those chips up into a minimum cash. I left the great state of Oklahoma with some bands in my pocket and called it a day.

If I had been asleep at the wheel during this one hand, I would have a tournament loss on my ledger at the end of the year. My family members can’t trade my bitching and moaning for groceries. It’s still my job to keep the lights on.

For these reasons, I am a special kind of asshole when I see my students fail to get value from a hand.

Anyone can make money with a set. Anyone can make money with a flush. Anyone can make money with Aces, Kings, or Queens. That requires no talent.

What will separate you from the pack is your ability to make money with weak top pairs and second pairs. If you can manufacture big blinds with mediocre hands then you will increase your win rate dramatically. The impact this has on your bottom line will become obvious to you at the end of the year.

If you consistently flop the best hand and think to yourself, “Quick! Make this pot as small as possible!” then you’re logically going to have a huge issue as the years go by.

Harness Your Killer Poker Instincts

When someone calls you out of the big blind with any piece of shit hand looks good to them, then it’s your job to clean them out. Do not give them a moment to breathe. Pepper them with bets. You should be betting so much that you occasionally value bet the second hand.

Opponents need to prove to you that they can play before you respect them. If they come back with a check-raise or a donk lead, then tip your hat and treat them different. But if they’re not showing you anything then you don’t to respect them. Get out of your comfort zone and get their chips. Fire away!

You can always spot a young guy or gal who has a future in the game if you see them hungry for value. If you see someone sweating how to get every last cent from an opponent then you know they have potential.

If you don’t see that killer’s instinct then you know the player is going to have issues. Premium holdings don’t come around that often. You don’t flop the lock on every other deal. You have to push yourself to watch your opponents and find their weaknesses. You must pay attention. You must execute. Your poker future depends on it.

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GTO Origins

Game Theory was not invented for poker, but rather the study of Game Theory was applied to modern poker strategy. Game Theory originated in 1928 in a paper published by mathematician John von Neumann. The concept was further studied and used to solve complex economic problems. Game Theory is used by economists, war strategists, and business executives to solve complex strategic problems. Game Theory applies mathematical concepts to find your best strategy, rather than relying on your gut.

GTO Poker Meaning

The concepts of GTO are a perfect match for poker. Most situations that use Game Theory involve at least two opposing parties. Each competitor’s actions affect the other, and there is imperfect information. Given the dynamics of poker, game theory is the ideal mathematical approach to identifying optimal decisions.

GTO strategy will put players on a range of hands which include both strong and weak holdings. For example, solvers love A5 suited as a preflop bluffing hand, so when a GTO poker player 4-bets preflop they can have AA and KK of course, but can also have A5 and some other preflop bluffs. This means they are balanced between strong and weak hands in most situations.

READ MORE: What the Hell is GTO?

When players play GTO poker they are attempting to be unexploitable. Many professionals have made their living by exploiting recreational players and not allowing themselves to be exploited. After all, many professionals will tell you the best way to make money in poker is to exploit weaknesses in other players, so of course, they will want an unexploitable strategy. GTO players become unexploitable by “randomizing” their decisions. They will not choose their action completely at random. GTO solutions will tell a player the percentage of times they should make a certain play.

For example, if a player goes all-in on the river and their opponent is a GTO player, they may be in a situation where they should call 75% of the time and fold 25% of the time with their specific hand. In this case, the player may look at a clock, if the second hand is between 12-9 they call and if 9-12 they will fold. If playing online, they may just use a random number generator to give them a number between 1 and 100 and make their decision based on that. By making your decision at random based on the GTO frequencies, you are theoretically unexploitable.

Consider the same scenario, except a recreational player is faced with the decision. Let’s say this player likes to call, so instead of calling 75% of the time, they are always calling. Their opponents can now use that to their advantage and value bet more often and for larger sizes knowing their opponent will call more.

Essentially, GTO poker is taking a mathematical approach to the game to help the player be unexploitable. It takes the emotion and gut feeling out of poker and rather relies on statistical analysis to determine the optimal decision. This isn’t mindlessly memorizing a chart. GTO players study many solutions and look for patterns since they can’t have a solver with them at the table. It is cheating to use a solver in real-time, and also impossible for a live poker player. It doesn’t take the skill out of the game, but it does require tons of practice rather than “raw talent”.

READ MORE: Check out our Red Chip Poker GTO Ranges App Review

While GTO poker is a great way for professionals to use mathematics to make good decisions, the strategy isn’t for everyone. Most poker players are like me, purely recreational. I love poker. I watch poker more than I do movies and TV shows, I talk about poker more than any other subject, and about 80% of my free time that isn’t spent with my family is dedicated to something poker-related. Many other recreational players have a similar love for the game as a purely recreational activity. This player type may not benefit from studying GTO.

5 Reasons Why You Should NOT Be Studying or Playing GTO Poker

1. Time Commitment

Studying poker Game Theory is a massive time commitment. Unless you have a top-of-the-line computer used for coding, the amount of time it takes for GTO simulations to run can be enormous. If you have a standard desktop computer, you can expect to wait hours for a simulation to run using a solver. That’s just the beginning. Once you have the completed simulations you still have to study them.

You learn GTO much like anything else, through repetitive practice and studying. The main benefit of using GTO solutions is to pick up on patterns the solver displays and find the underlying concepts such as balanced ranges, mixed strategies, card removal, and randomization. Finding these patterns and understanding them to a level that will impact your game can take a very long time.

If you are a purely recreational player like myself, you may not have an endless amount of time to devote to studying game theory. Especially if you have a full-time job and a family to take care of. Poker is a pastime for many, so if you don’t want a large portion of your poker time devoted to studying theory instead of playing, GTO likely isn’t for you.

2. You Could Lose your Gut

No, you will not lose belly fat by studying GTO. Trust me, if you could I’d be a human solver by now. What may end up happening is you lose your gut sense for the game. If you enjoy the game of poker as a hobby like me, you may love having a gut feeling that something is off. It could be making an insane call with A-high or laying down a monster hand just to find out your opponent has a better one. Either way, trusting your gut and being correct is a great feeling. When you play a GTO style you lose that. It becomes more about following the optimal frequencies and being balanced in every spot rather than trusting your gut and going with a read. That gut sense you get is an exploitative strategy that can be far more rewarding than GTO.

3. Math

Playing a GTO strategy means you must be comfortable with some math. I’m likely an outlier since I love math. My brain was wired for it. It makes sense to me and is oddly comforting. However, I’m assuming most people don’t want to do math in their downtime. GTO isn’t rocket science, but you will need to be calculating frequencies and using more math than the average poker player. If you don’t want to be thinking about percentages and frequencies during your hobby it may be best to skip the GTO study.

4. Exploits can be More Profitable

On to some more practical reasons why you shouldn’t study GTO. You can often make more money playing an exploitative strategy. Exploiting a player’s weaknesses will allow you to win more than simply playing a balanced and theoretically sound strategy. Of course, going way off the reservation to exploit isn’t good, but doing small things here and there to exploit weaknesses will make you more money. If you are up against a nitty player and the GTO move is to call their river bet, you may find yourself making bad calls in an attempt to play GTO poker. If you get too involved with what the solver says, you may miss the glaring information in front of you. Pay attention, use your gut, and find those exploits

5. GTO is Best Used Against other GTO Players

Playing game theory optimal poker works best when you are playing against other GTO players. GTO solvers found their solutions by playing against other solvers. It’s like Rounders meets The Matrix. Computers learned poker and started playing against each other. As they played more and more hands, their strategy became more sophisticated. Eventually, these solvers found optimal strategies for many spots by playing each other.

Since solvers learned the GTO solution by playing other solvers, the theory is based on playing an opponent who is also making GTO decisions. If you walk into any local poker room or casino, odds are you aren’t finding too many perfect GTO players. Plenty of people study poker but usually not in-depth. If you are following GTO strategies against players who are not, you may be making money-losing decisions.

Studying GTO poker has helped many professionals become almost entirely unexploitable. This strategy is incredibly valuable when playing against top professionals. They got to be professionals by exploiting their opponents, so to be a top pro you cannot have any glaring leaks that can be exploited. Casual players don’t have the same opponents as these GTO professionals, so the optimal approach may not benefit the recreational poker player.

You can get a lot further in your local poker room by trusting your gut and finding exploits. Not only can it be more profitable to ignore poker Game Theory, but it can also be more fun! Not many people I know want to stare at a computer screen looking at decision frequencies during their lunch break, let alone their weekend. There is nothing wrong with keeping poker as a pastime. Just because you can make a living on the felt doesn’t mean you need to try to. There is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving GTO poker to the professionals and keeping poker as a recreational activity for yourself.