So how would you beat an opponent playing GTO Rock, Paper, Scissors? Well, you’d have to deviate from time to time. If you know your opponent is going to throw Rock 33% of the time and you see them throw Rock five times in a row, you can be fairly certain that Rock won’t show up very often in the next few throws. You now have a 50% chance they will throw Paper and a 50% chance they will throw Scissors. Your optimal strategy here would be to throw Scissors.

This is common amongst modern poker players although many fail to realise that the following calculations are based on a heavily simplified model of poker and don't necessarily represent perfect GTO poker solutions. However, they should serve as a useful introduction to a GTO concepts and increase our effectiveness in many situations where we.

• Your Scissors vs Opponent’s Scissors = a tie.
• Your Scissors vs Opponent’s Paper = a win for you.

You could play your Scissors strategy until your opponent throws a Rock, then revert back to GTO strategy. Once you see a pattern again you can deviate from GTO to create a winning strategy.

1. GTO poker means using game theory and Nash Equilibrium to create balanced, unexploitable strategies. Unexploitable means that, even if your opponent knew your strategy, he could not discover ways to exploit it.
2. GTO (Game-Theory Optimal): This playing style is where you essentially attempt to play perfect poker yourself, which in turn only allows for your opponents to make mistakes against you (which is where almost all of your profit will be derived from).
3. GTO Poker Explained - Learn what Game Theory Optimal poker is and whether you should use this strategy over exploitative play in poker games. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive,.
4. There’s a buzz word in the poker world these days that you may have heard, but many new players aren’t yet familiar with it. That buzz is GTO. GTO stands for Game Theory Optimal. What it means is using an unexploitable strategy, which cannot be countered by your opponent.

You’re probably thinking, “Great, I’m a Rock, Paper, Scissors pro…what does this have to do with poker?”. Well GTO, in its very basic form, is just the art of perfect balance. Let’s explain in poker terms.

• Rock = Raise for value 33%
• Paper = Check 33%
• Scissors = Raise as bluff 33%

Let’s say on the river the above were your three options. Just as in Rock, Paper, Scissors, you’ll need to find the right balance. Of course, with poker it’s much more complicated, based on many different factors including your opponent.

Gto Poker Concepts Definition

Whilst the perfect balance may be to bluff the river 33% of the time, it wouldn’t make sense to bluff an opponent you know will call you 100% of the time. In this case you can only raise your value hands and check your weaker hands.

Gto Poker Concepts Games

However, if this opponent notices that you only ever bet on the river with value hands, so starts folding, they are exploiting your play. You could then start to bluff the river, exploiting their play, until they figure out you are bluffing. After they figure out you only bluff the river, you could revert back to GTO of 33% bluff, 33% value, 33% check making us much tougher to play against. Again, we can deviate from GTO where doing so makes sense.

Gto Poker Concepts Game

GTO is really not too important at lower stakes games, but is important for high stakes, nosebleed games and high rollers. For most of us, whilst it’s good knowledge to have, it’s probably not as important as balancing our value bets, bluffs and calls to exploit our opponents.