Should Low-Stakes Players Study GTO? Raise Your Edge's Benjamin Rolle Weighs In
Theoretical or exploitative? This age-old question about which method of poker strategy is more effective has yet to be answered, with accomplished players and coaches belonging in both camps.
Raise Your Edge founder Benjamin "bencb789" Rolle, recently weighed in on X about how aspiring poker players at low and mid-stakes should think about solvers and Game Theory Optimal (GTO) play when studying.
"I am tired of coaches trying to teach you their 'you don’t need GTO at all' approach, or the other direction: 'You need GTO to crush,'" Rolle wrote on X on April 20. "I will show you a good balance, and help you understand when it is needed and when not."
Rolle Gets Real About GTO
Rolle, one of the top online poker players in the world, noted that he has "always shared my skepticism about the way people learn and apply GTO."
"However, how are you supposed to know how to exploit someone and identify leaks if you don’t know the baseline - the theory?" he added.
Rolle said that most micro, low and mid-stakes players play in casinos "against very bad players" and therefore "The advice 'You don’t need GTO' is kind of accurate for these games."
"BUT looking into some of these GTO sims and seeing a spot where your opponent is supposed to fold a lot of top pairs against a 3-barrel to make your bluff somewhat profitable can be helpful and very eye opening," he added. "Seeing the EV/money you are torching in these spots vs bad players can save you A TON of money in similar spots. Someone showing you that if you alter the range and your opponent is calling more top pairs than he should - that all of your bluffs will be -EV and all you do is value betting (So here, pairing GTO + realistic analysis is super helpful)."
The online poker pro and Raise Your Edge founder added, "I see solvers similar to your first driving lessons. You should have someone helping you (a proven winning player) to put the solver outputs into context - showing you how you can get the most out of the solver. Someone who can tell you which of the ranges/strategies shown in the solver are useful, which are not, and which exploits you can make - and how you can interpret your opponent’s range."
Rolle invited players who want to put these concepts in to action to check out his seven-day Online Bootcamp debuting on May 5.
Check out Rolle's full X post here.
