How to Use GTO+ Part 1: Navigating the Interface & Setting Up Game Trees

When I first started this website in January, my primary goal was to share my self-guided work broadly as a way to challenge my growth and knowledge of the game. Over the past few months, I’ve produced some in-depth articles on various aspects of flop play, but my overall plan is to examine the entire no-limit hold’em game tree using data.

The posts I have put together related to my work take time to produce. While I think I have a good idea of what topics will be interesting, I also follow the data during the exploration process. As a result, sometimes I hit dead ends, and other times I realize that a topic might not be worth writing about. Because of this, I have found that it takes me around 2-3 weeks to produce a research post from ideation to completion.

Luckily, there have been other topics I’ve been able to write about to increase the frequency at which I can develop and produce content. One of these topics has been recapping my experience on Poker Out Loud.

After the last episode aired two weeks ago, I realized I’d have to fill that void with something else. It’s unrealistic for me to pump out more research, so I wanted to start another recurring series of posts that complement my ongoing research work. I kicked around a few ideas but ultimately landed on a set of “how-to” videos that help people navigate solvers.

Since I started the website, the most frequent types of questions I’ve received have been related to using solvers more effectively. It’s not a secret that I am a huge proponent of using them within poker study. I’ve created several videos using them to analyze hands and another sharing a process for working through study sessions. In all videos, I assume a baseline level of understanding of how they work and how to operate them.

As it turns out, the documentation for most solvers isn’t very helpful. Some tutorial videos or FAQs are floating around. Still, many are not very comprehensive, outdated, and do not explain the practical implications of different features. Below is the first in a series of videos that I believe will be a great resource to help those with little solver knowledge.

I plan to turn this into a multi-part series for several popular solvers, including PioSolver and the Simple Poker solutions. However, I decided to start with GTO+. While all of the above are great products with their own strengths, I prefer the user interface for GTO+ and believe it’s a great solution for many who want to try solvers.

I plan to break each series into a few videos following a similar structure:

1. Navigating the Interface & Setting Up Game Trees

2. Running a Solve & Interpreting the Output

3. Editing Trees & Node Locking

4. Data Aggregation & Other Advanced Tips

Below is the first part in the GTO+ series, where I walk through the basics of the GTO+ interface and how to set up a game tree:

If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to leave any comments below. You can also contact me at [email protected] or on Twitter or YouTube through the links in the footer below.

-Lukich