Beyond GTO: Poker Exploits Simplified (The Poker Solved Series) Paperback – January 21, 2024

I am only half way through this book and I have taken 4th in a 50 person MTT. The book has already paid for itself. The authors turn GTO on it's head by node locking against what imperfect humans actually do (since we aren't emotionless bots with terabytes of memory we can access quickly in a real game situation) to show exploits that sometime seem counterintuitive. While the charts are presented in an easily readable way, the book emphasizes working on concepts rather than memorization (did I mention we don't have terabytes of memory....). This allows the readier to adapt to new exploits as the present themselves. Sometimes GTO book and other poker books are a bit of a slog to get through. Not this book. It is easy to read and gives clear, actionable concepts that can be immediately applied. This is consistent through all of the books from these authors. In case I forgot to mention-get this book (unless you play in my poker group- I like the edge it gives me).

Seriously, the word should get out – this book is great – helping you understand many counter-intuitive spots, often opposed to common belief. It’s always been hard for me to understand what is that other guy thinking, but now using node locking the leaks of bad players can be recreated and then solved for exploits. In a style that kinda resembles 'old' Roy Cooke, in that these lessons you can skip around as each lesson stands alone, but this is clearly 'new' modern-day top solver advice from expert Dara and witty Barry.Six Preflop leaks are examined including “Not Defending Enough” and “Bad Range Construction”.Fifteen Post Flop leaks are examined including “River Mistakes” and “Bet Sizing Tells”.The Key takeaways at the end of each section are thoughtful.Basically, don’t tell your opponents about this - buy this book - stop leaving yourself open to exploitation - lean into the leaks of others - play better poker!

If you have read a book by these authors before, you know they provide great, understandable information. This is their best book so far.

I have purchased all of Dara Okearney's books. I have read dozens of others out there and his are so good that I will just automatically buy whatever he puts out next. He has a great way of explaining concepts that I just understand and can implement easily.

Breaks down complicated concepts into digestable hueristics. Any skill level can learn something from this book.

I'm a big fan of O'Kearney and Carter's "GTO Poker Simplified" and was eager to buy this one. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that the book is riddled with errors. Since the authors present a number of exploitative findings that go against conventional wisdom, I can't help but conclude that the glaring mistakes undermine their credibility, which therefore gnaws away at the trustworthiness of these lessons, and, in turn, the usefulness of the book.At first, I just noticed stuff that was annoying but not particularly concerning. A few typos here and there, and, for instance, pages 123-137 have totally wrong headers on each page. Ok, that makes the book slightly less readable, but not a big deal. But then I noticed that the chart on page 117, which presents *key findings*, has two figures which are supposed to add to 100% but....don't. (In the "Never Bluffs" Row: Lojack Bets: 37.69%, Lojack Calls: 32.32%. Total = 70.01%).After that discovery, I began examining the range charts in the book, concerned that there might be more sloppy mistakes. And I found a bunch. For starters, the range chart on page 190 is supposed to show UTG’s GTO opening range at 40 BBs. The reader is supposed to compare it with the chart on page 191, which purports to show UTG’s GTO strategy at 40 BBs after a certain flop with BB checking 100% of the time. But suddenly, KJo, KTo, QJo, JTo, T8s, 98s, 87s, 33, and 22 have just disappeared. If there’s been no action in between these two charts besides BB checking, why has anything been folded? I thought maybe the authors just accidentally omitted the hands that BB does in fact fold in this spot. But 65s also appears out of nowhere, so that's not what happened. You can also compare the BB charts in this example, where similarly, hands magically appear and disappear between the charts. It looks like the authors started the chapter with examples from one stack size and then accidentally switched to another stack size for the rest of the chapter. Uh oh.The thing that really concerned me was when I realized that in other spots in the book, once the node-locked exploits are implemented, hands disappear and/or appear. [A quick note on "node-locking": basically it means that, in order to generate the best exploit to a player deviating from optimal play, you tell a solver to respond to a particular kind of mistake, holding all else equal.] Compare the BTN range chart on the top of page 225 (which contains JJ) with that on 226 (which omits JJ). This is supposed to be a response to a villain who folds the turn too much. At first I thought JJ disappears because, with CO’s leak in place, BTN responds by folding JJ on the flop for some reason. But that's not it because, in the example, the authors write that the CO checks the flop 100% of the time (see page 222). Thus, BTN literally can't have folded JJ on the flop. That leaves preflop adjustment. Is it really the case that, if the CO folds the turn too much, the solver response for BTN is to fold JJ preflop 100% of the time? One of the best preflop hands in poker? Plus, that’s the only preflop adjustment? It makes no sense whatsoever.For similar examples, compare the charts on pages 99 and 103 (KQs disappears), pages 107 and 108 (77 appears and Q9s disappears), pages 133 and 134 (AA and K9s appear, A7s disappears), pages 190 and 191 (KJo, KTo, QJo, K7s, K6s, 33, and 22 disappear while 65s appears), pages 236 and 237 (65s appears).... Basically, either there are bizarre preflop adjustments going on which the authors never discuss, or these charts are simply not comparing apples to apples and are instead comparing solver solutions from totally different situations to generate many of the takeaways that are supposed to inform our play. Either way, when the authors write that "the adjustment is to do [a given exploit] x% of the time instead of y% of the time," it can't always be accurate.To be fair to the authors, I emailed them with these concerns, asking if I was misunderstanding something fundamental about lode-nocking which might account for some of these discrepancies. (After all, they warn in one of the introductions that a solver response to a leak might result in earlier streets changing, even though they also write: "We tried our best to ensure that in our locks, the player was doing what they would do on earlier and later streets.") I received a curt response from O'Kearney acknowledging they had "caught a few errors post publication." Since the book is self-published, I am somewhat baffled why it seems they haven't fixed the errors they caught. In any event, they did not let me know that anything I had found was not in fact a mistake. I suspect that some of these errors might reveal a more fundamental limitation with using node-locking to develop exploitative strategies. However, at the end of the day, many of the mistakes appear to simply be a result of carelessness.So, while I remain a fan of O'Kearney and Barter's previous work, I was let down by this book, and hope they hire a proof-reader/copyeditor before publishing their next one.