The Quest to 'Solve' Hold'em (and Other Games)Īs you adjust your strategy to an opponent's strategy, he or she will adjust to yours, and so forth.įor heads-up limit Texas hold'em, the University of Alberta team took this process to its logical conclusion, publishing their results earlier this year in Science magazine. You have some idea of what that strategy would be with various hands, and your job is to take that into account when executing your own strategy. Reacting to an opponent's attempts to run you over is so natural to a thinking poker player, framing it in terms of GTO poker can seem almost superfluous. And yet, it's not possible for them to collaborate toward a mutually beneficial solution. Thus the two players in the hand are only hurting themselves, by trying to bust each other. The poker equivalent would be two players fighting it out on the bubble of a tournament.Įxcept for the super-deep stacks who can chip up on the bubble with no risk of busting, the remaining players benefit from any confrontation that leads to elimination. The 'Bubble Dilemma' Another dilemma: a tournament bubble In an environment where players are rewarded for taking advantage of each other, it may not be worth acting cooperatively, even if all sides would be better off by doing so. If we both snitch, we both get a harsh sentence, since each person's testimony can be used against the other.Įven though we would be best off with the first scenario ( nobody talks), each individual is better off from collaborating with the authorities, regardless of what the other does (if I don't snitch, you should snitch to get off free, and if I do snitch, you should definitely snitch as well). However, if one of us snitches on the other, the snitch will get off with no punishment at all, while the person who doesn't talk gets a harsh sentence. If neither of us talks, we both get off with light sentences. In this hypothetical situation, the two of us are arrested for jointly committing a crime. Outside of poker, GTO is usually introduced with the ' prisoner's dilemma.' The prisoners' dilemma (source: Penn State University) Or Bruce Willis in any Bruce Willis movie. GTO - especially in the context of modern poker games - is largely about pursuing a strategy that makes it impossible for you to get pushed around. Since most of my time these days is spent building computer AIs that play strong poker, I'm often thinking about how computers look to GTO poker strategies for playing unexploitable poker.

It is interesting to consider what this means to a poker player, as well as how this concept has become a dominant framework for looking at ideal poker strategy. A game theory optimal solution to a game has precise mathematical definitions.

Limit holdem poker strategy