BUT WHAT'S YOUR RANGE

Originally Posted by Carroters

GTO is not pointless. Once again...IMO, for the new player, GTO is secondary to learning the basics of exploitative poker like how to put your opponent on a rough range, understanding equity, EV, player types, c-betting, 3-betting. I don't think the most useful way to first understand these concepts is through anything that resembles learning what GTO is.

I totally agree with this, that there is a progression people have to follow if they want to get really good at anything.

Originally Posted by ImSavy

Why do you think so many top class poker players are completely revamping their game from a GTO perspective? They aren't doing it to try and miss out on all the value on the table by not exploiting villains, that's for sure.

This too. When the best players are really into it there's something there. And I like all that stuff because I'm a math geek too.

However first I need to get a thought process that includes some semblance of hand reading. I'm thinking I just have to thoroughly analyze hands-with-ranges enough until it gets to be somewhat natural. But I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on getting to that level.

Right now I deal out flops and just run down all the hands from the nuts through all the one pair hands and count the combos for each hand. Kinda boring but I think it's useful. For example if flop is Txy there are 120 combos of top pair not set but only 24 combos of overpair. And of course when possible there's always a ton of straight draws because you get 16 combos for each draw. That kind of thing.

Originally Posted by jackvance

Is it "Preflop 3-Betting, 4-Betting, and 5-Betting Frequencies"?

It actually looks pretty good. The chapter titles are:
1. The Basics
2. Preflop Play
3. Post-flop Bet Sizing
4. Facing a Flop Bet in Position
5. Whether to Bet or Check in Position
6. Out of Position Flop Play
7. 3-Bet Pots on the Flop
8. Playing the Turn in Position
9. Playing the Turn Out of Position
10. 3-Bet Pots on the Turn
11. River Play
12. Multi-way Pots
13. Shallow and Deep Stack Play
14. Advanced Bet Sizing
15. Applying Theory to Analyze Hands
16. Sample Hands

The title is Applications of NLHE for those who haven't heard of it. It's a hefty 494 pages, typical 2p2 looking print job. I haven't started it yet. I expect it's all about balance. Probably I'll read it later. And sorry if off topic but it seemed kinda relevant. I do agree with people that GTO is a baseline to adjust from when playing better players like at higher stakes. It is all very interesting.

While Janda's book has a horribly butchered title, it is very good and I would recommend it for a non-beginner trying to move into the more mathy parts of game theory and defensive play (i.e. moving past the games where you can just value bet the hell out of TPTK and win).

Having said that, his first page after the acknowledgements is a disclaimer that pretty much states that if you try to play in this way against "non-experts" you will be doing it wrong.