This past month, the World Series of Poker Main Event wrapped up. This main event broke records for the number of players participating, and when dust settled, Jonathan Tamayo of Humble, Texas was the last man standing and $10 million richer.
But this victory didn't come without controversy — a controversy that everyone has super strong, life-or-death opinions on, and absolutely no one will remember or care about next year.
Before I explain the controversy, some background is in order.
For quite a few years now, serious poker players find themselves in two camps: those practicing exploitative play, and those relying Game Theory Optimization, usually abbreviated to GTO.
Exploitative play means, you pay close attention to your opponent's tendencies and adjust your game accordingly, "exploiting" them. Your opponents, of course, may do the same, trying to pick up on your play and exploiting you.
GTO holds that you can play perfect, unexploitable poker, and make optimal, profitable moves regardless of how your opponent is playing.
How so? With the use of "solvers." These are tools that tell you "with this hand, in this situation, you should raise X% of the time, and fold %x of the time," or whatever.
It's probably a good idea to have a strong understanding of both GTO and exploitative play for best results.
However, I must confess to being extremely skeptical about both some of the principles of GTO as well as the way it is often employed.
First, I can't wrap my head around the idea of "perfect play" in a game where so much of the information is hidden. This, to me, would indicate poker cannot be "solved."
Chess, on the other hand, is a game of perfect information — everyone knows everything about the game as it's unfolding. No information is hidden.
Some games with perfect information have been solved. One such example is Connect 4. You grew up playing that, too, right? Well, it's another game of perfect information, and they've built computer programs that will never err and basically can't be beat.
But even if I'm wrong about that, that poker can be solved, can be played perfectly and unexploitably, and these solvers on the market give you perfect advice every time (how can we be sure?), my second problem with the idea is this:
If you get a game together with a bunch of GTO disciples who are all excellent at utilizing GTO and have memorized solver charts galore, well, doesn't that mean the winners and losers will just be random? What's the point of that?
By contrast, if you are playing exploitation-style players, or really, anyone who does not try to employ GTO — surely tailoring your play to exploit theirs is better than charts that tell you to do this or that, regardless of how your opponent plays.
Nevertheless, GTO is, ah, highly favored among the top tier of poker players. And that brings us back to Tamayo. After many hands, he scrambled to the stands ("the rail" as its called in the poker biz) where his friends were, so he could check how he played his hand utilizing a solver his buddies had up on a laptop.
A lot of people have a biiiiig problem with this. They call it cheating, and say it's against the rules (the rules are kind of opaque and open to interpretation with respect to electronic devices). They say this is going to discourage recreational players from even getting into the game (as if this is the first year solvers have been a thing).
Considering how firmly pro-exploitable play I am, and my strong antipathy towards GTO, you might think I have a problem with Tamayo's constant solver-checking, but I don't. At all.
The most important part of this is he was checking his buddy's solvers after he played a hand, not during it. So, not cheating, I think that's pretty clear. Should he be allowed to check a solver right after a hand? Well, why not? No one would object if he ran some of his hands through a solver that night in his hotel room, so where do we draw the line, and why do you draw the line wherever you draw it?
I don't think a line needs to be drawn at all, other than, perhaps to state the obvious, not allowing it when you are still involved in a hand.
Using a solver is basically a form of coaching, which is allowed in every sport except tennis. It should be allowed in tennis, too. Tennis purists like to keep coaching out of live play "because that's what makes tennis different!" which is absolutely not enough of a reason to prohibit it, by my lights.
But more than that, solvers are a very, very limited form of coaching. It's just charts saying do this, this percentage of the time.
I think this primarily appeals to left-brained types, which I am very much not. So many poker players come from left-brained vocations like finance, mathematics, engineering, and so on. The idea that poker is solvable and there's a perfect play to make every time appeals to them greatly. If it's not fun to just do what a solver tells you to do like a robot, so be it. Fun isn't a priority for them.
As for me and my wet, artsy-fartsy right-brain, I will continue to play exploitative poker, and (ignorantly or not), not feel intimidated by GTO types (not that I really play at stakes where they are the most popular).
And I'm not bad myself. I have four four-figure scores in my career, dozens of scores where I won 5x times my buyin or more, and hundreds of cashes, all while playing extremely part-time and not doing anything close to "grinding."
Tamayo, go nuts with your solvers.
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