The only way this assertion makes sense is if you assume that everyone is risk neutral (or has exactly the same risk aversion, I guess) and gets no actual utility from playing poker. I mean, consider the following:
You have AdKd
The board is Td Jd 2c 4s
There is $100 in the pot as the turn is dealt. Your opponent bets his last $41 as he flips over Ts Tc. You’ve got 10/44 outs, so you’re offered just slightly better than 0 EV for the call.
Is it really crazy to think that all of these are true?:
A risk-neutral gambler would call the bet because it has a slightly positive EV
A risk-averse gambler would fold because the EV is trivial relative to the variance of calling vs. folding.
A risk-seeking player who enjoys playing would call not because of the EV, but because of the 23% of winning a large pot
Imagine rock paper scissors for money. GTO play is throwing randomly every time, but I know my friend loves throwing rock so I deviate from GTO play to throw paper far more often than I “should”. I’m not playing GTO but I am more profitable.
The GTO conversation is silly. It’s low-limit plo/nlh (I don’t pretend to have a clue about the 8/16 mixed game stuff). They are almost identical world wide. We all played billion of hours of it. If I had the manual to the GTO solution to a 9 handed live game, there is exactly 0% I’ll use it in a 1-3 game. It will cost me tons of money.
You can definitely win money playing any strategy that involves never tilting and not pay off nits. Period. The issue is NBZ keeps mentioning how the games have changed and he adapted this strategy and like no. They haven’t. Certainly not to a place where adopting a loose-passive approach is somehow the preferred strategy.
The GTO solution to rock paper scissors is well-known – randomize evenly. Still, there are RPS tournaments, and gambling, and skill. Since the EV of the GTO solution is 0, any skill necessarily involves not playing GTO.
The profit-maximizing strategy in real poker games is rarely going to be the GTO strategy. You would tell a person making maximum profits that they are wrong and there is a single correct answer.
Read The Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Ankenman. That’s more a textbook that uses toy games as examples and almost no examples from hold em. Play Optimal Poker and Play Optimal Poker 2 by Andrew Brooks for GTO applied to specifically NLHE.
I feel like you really don’t understand the strategy I’m describing.
You describe your post flop as “making better decisions on 8 handed flops” which isn’t really a strategy, but sure. I honestly believe you that it works to a certain degree, because the average player as really bad.
You just give out so many meta explanations that are fairly meaningless. The EV change caused by your “talking” or your “friendliness” is closer to 0 than you think.
Do you need to build a reputation as being tight and only showing the nuts or very strong hands before you check raise bluff in spots? It seems like you would need to. I mean, you don’t have to but it seems like that’s what you are describing.
Just describing a low stakes PLO strategy that is more weighted towards bluffing than value betting is wild. I’ve seen people get all in pf with trips in their hand (not kings or aces)!
