GTO poker, short for game theory optimal, is a mathematically balanced strategy designed to make your play unexploitable. No matter what your opponents do against a true GTO strategy, they cannot profit. They can only break even at best.
I have spent years studying GTO concepts and coaching players through the same learning curve I went through myself. What I find is that most players hear the term and assume GTO means “copy the solver output.” It does not.
GTO is a framework for thinking about ranges, frequencies, and balance. Understanding it transforms how you see every decision at the table, even the ones you deliberately make as exploitative deviations.
What Is GTO Poker?
GTO Poker (game theory optimal poker) is a style of poker-based entirely on mathematics, designed to make your plays unexploitable.
Playing a GTO strategy means making different moves at the right frequencies to always make them profitable, or at least break even, regardless of your opponents’ actions.
When faced with another perfect GTO player, the GTO strategy would break even. In all other cases, the GTO strategy would make a profit.
However, a complete GTO poker strategy has not yet been discovered, as there are too many variables in poker to create one.
What’s even more, humans can’t play GTO poker in real-time without using the assistance of computers, which is why an approximation of a GTO strategy is the best we can do.
Yet, studying poker with Solvers (a GTO poker simulation tool) is one of the best ways to learn how to play and how to think about the game in terms of ranges, frequencies, and balance.
One of the best poker players in the world under the age of 30,
PokerCoaching.com coach Justin Saliba has built a career on playing GTO poker.
How GTO Poker Differs from Exploitative Poker
As we have just explained, GTO poker focuses on making our game unexploitable and ensuring that we are perfectly balanced at all times.
Exploitative poker, on the other hand, focuses on exploiting our opponents’ mistakes, thus unbalancing our ranges at the expense of capitalizing on others’ mistakes.
While exploitative play gains more when big leaks are spotted in our opponent’s game, it also makes us exploitable and crushed if our opponents spot our leaks.
By using an approximation of a GTO poker strategy, we can always play poker the same way and continue to print money, especially in heads-up poker situations.
On the other hand, when faced with a particularly weak opposition, switching to an exploitative style of poker will usually result in a higher win rate, provided we don’t make big mistakes that will cost us dearly in return.
While old school legends like Phil Hellmuth built careers off of
playing exploitative poker, in the modern era, GTO is needed to beat the best.
Poker Solvers – GTO Tools You Will Need
Before you can really start exploring the world of GTO poker, you need to understand what poker solvers are and, just as importantly, how to use them correctly. Poker solvers are tools that simulate GTO strategy.
If you are studying on PokerCoaching, the natural starting point is PeakGTO (peakgto.com), the solver built specifically for this site. Other widely used options include PioSolver and GTO Wizard.
In my experience, the biggest mistake students make when first using solvers is treating every output as a rule to memorize rather than a concept to understand. When I study with a solver, I am not trying to memorize that I should bet at a specific frequency in one exact spot.
I am trying to understand why the solver arrives at that sizing, so I can carry the underlying principle into every other spot I face. That shift in mindset is what separates players who improve from solvers from players who just collect outputs.
Poker solvers are able to calculate the exact way in which you should play the different hands in your range based on a variety of inputs you provide them with.
For example, if you provide a poker solver with your starting hand range, the pre-flop action, and the stack sizes of the players involved in the pot, as well as the flop that was dealt out, it will provide you with a full rundown of all the hands with which you should check or make bets of different sizes.
You can view poker solvers as training tools that will help you understand GTO poker strategy more profoundly and eventually lead you to start instinctively making plays that resemble the Game Theory Optimal way.
That said, it is important to note that the use of poker solvers while playing poker is forbidden in both online poker and live games, and that these tools only exist to help you study the game while away from the tables.
Key Poker GTO Concepts
Unlike an exploitative poker strategy, the GTO approach requires thinking in specific concepts that are not intuitive at first. What I find when coaching players new to GTO is that the terminology trips them up before the strategy does.
Once these core concepts click, everything else follows. Here are the ones that actually matter.
Poker Hand Ranges
The concept of hand ranges in poker has become increasingly standardized in recent years and is utilized by both GTO and exploitative poker players.
A hand range is a collection of all poker hands that you or your opponent can have in a given situation when all previous action is taken into consideration.
Poker solvers can be used to determine optimal preflop hand ranges for various stack depths and positions. This hand range is then shrunk down with each new action.
Whenever you analyze poker hands with a solver, you will always be presented with solutions as to what to do with different parts of your range.
As you adopt the strategy, you will learn to always think about both your and your opponent’s hands in terms of ranges rather than two specific cards.
Preflop charts like the one shown above can help you play a proper GTO strategy.
Action Frequencies
While most novice poker players think about making certain plays in terms of either making them or not, poker solvers “think” differently and often present you with a mixed strategy that is made up of distinct actions, each to be made at a different frequency.
For instance, facing a preflop re-raise, the solver might suggest that you fold your hand 70% of the time and 4-bet it the remaining 30% of the time.
While this may seem counterintuitive, especially when the call option is not even mentioned, there is a method to this line of thinking.
The solver may decide to incorporate a hand that is not worth making a call with into your bluffing range at a certain frequency, all in order to remain balanced and unexploitable.
The truth is that thinking about poker plays in terms of frequencies will take a lot of getting used to, and only working with solvers for an extended period of time will help you actually get there in full.
Minimum Defense Frequency (MDF)
One of the most commonly heard but also most commonly misunderstood GTO poker concepts is minimum defense frequency (MDF).
MDF refers to the minimum percentage of hands in your hand range that you should continue with (by either calling or raising) when facing a bet from your opponent.
Calculating MDF is fairly simple in theory, although coming up with the exact portion of your range you should continue while playing is too big of a challenge in most situations. Yet, working with MDF calculations while studying poker will help you quickly come up with close approximations while playing, helping you make the right decisions at the table.
Minimum defense frequency is calculated using this simple formula:
MDF = Pot Size / (Pot Size + Bet Size)
While you can calculate the MDF using this formula, you can also use the table below to quickly figure out what percentage of your hands you should continue with facing some standard bet sizes:
| BET SIZE | MINIMUM DEFENZE FREQUENCY |
| Full Pot | 50% |
| 3/4 Pot | 57% |
| 2/3 Pot | 60% |
| Half Pot | 67% |
| 1/3 Pot | 75% |
Once you have calculated the percentage of hands you should continue with, the real trick is to determine which hands to fold and which to continue with.
Solvers do an excellent job of identifying the perfect hands to call and raise with, based on backdoor equity, your ability to continue bluffing on the turn, as well as blockers and unblockers.
You will learn more about these concepts as you study solver outputs and analyze each new hand, teaching you the logic behind the GTO poker strategy.
Balancing Your Ranges
Playing GTO poker is all about finding balance in every possible situation, which means finding hands to bluff with and to value bet within your range on every board.
This can be extremely difficult to do in Texas Hold’em, as our instincts often tell us that certain boards are not great to bluff at or that we should check out value hands more often than we really should.
Thankfully, solvers are there to help us shed these fears and make the right decisions, which is why studying different board textures with solvers is so important.
Remember that solvers will always look to find balance by finding the right hands to bluff and the equivalent number of hands to value bet with, depending on the bet sizes you instruct it to use.
Players who strive to mimic solver strategies always talk about balancing their range, and while it may seem like they are taking it too far, there is certainly good logic behind their thinking.
Tools like the FREE Range Analyzer on PokerCoaching.com
can help you better study poker ranges.
The Indifference Principle
One of the most powerful ideas behind the GTO strategy is the indifference principle. When you are playing a perfectly balanced GTO strategy, your opponent should be indifferent between their available options in key spots. In other words, calling or folding yields the same expected value for them when you are balanced.
This matters because it explains the entire logic behind mixed strategies. I often tell students: you are not randomizing your actions because you are uncertain what to do. You are randomizing because making your opponent indifferent removes their ability to exploit you. If they call every time against your river bet and you are perfectly balanced between value hands and bluffs, their call gains them nothing. If they fold every time, your bluffs become automatic profits.
The practical takeaway is this: the reason solvers suggest betting your bluffs at specific frequencies is to hit that indifference threshold. Go above it, and you are over-bluffing. Go below it, and you are leaving free money behind.
Is GTO Poker the Best Poker Strategy?
Here is what I tell every student who asks me whether to play GTO or go exploitative: the question is not which one to choose; it is which one fits the situation in front of you right now. In my experience coaching players at every level, the mistake is almost always defaulting to one approach without reading the table.
GTO strategy is the better choice in two clear situations. First, when your opponents are strong and studied, playing exploitatively against them risks them spotting your patterns and turning those patterns against you.
Second, when you are in an unfamiliar spot with no reads, a GTO baseline gives you a safe default that cannot be punished.
On the other hand, against weaker opposition, exploitative plays often yield higher gains and better net results, making an exploitative strategy superior.
At the end of the day, whichever way you choose to go in a given game, understanding the GTO baselines will allow you to make better exploitative deviations and will allow you to play against just about anyone without being run over.
Final Words on GTO Poker
I have been studying GTO poker for years, and the single most important shift it produced in my own game was not specific plays. It was learning to think in ranges. Once you start seeing the table that way, every decision becomes clearer, whether you are playing close to GTO or deliberately deviating from it to maximize profit against a weaker opponent.
That said, remember that humans cannot play GTO to perfection. Every solver study session and every hand review you do is building an approximation, a better model of balanced play that holds up across more situations.
Yet, studying poker using GTO-based solvers will enable you to approach the game from a different perspective and develop strong fundamentals that will make you extremely difficult to beat. Whether you are looking to play against the very best players out there or dominate your local home game, exploring the world of GTO poker will help you become a better player and compete at a higher level.
Start your poker journey today by going over basic poker tournament strategy and cash game tips, and then fire up the solver and run your first-hand analysis to see just how deep the rabbit hole really goes.
