Balancing Between GTO and Exploitative Play in Tournaments

[babyrosejr]

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between sticking to a solid GTO approach versus making exploitative adjustments in tournaments. On the one hand, GTO gives you a foundation that’s hard to counter and helps avoid big mistakes. On the other hand, tournament fields are often full of players who make clear errors – and not adjusting can mean leaving chips (and EV) on the table.

For example, against opponents who over-fold to 3-bets, we can open up our bluffing range more aggressively. But when facing sticky players who love to call down with weak hands, pure GTO bluffs might just burn chips.

So my question is: how do you personally find the right balance? Do you lean more toward GTO as a baseline and then adjust slightly, or do you prefer a more exploitative-first strategy in softer fields?

Would love to hear your thoughts and examples from your own games.

 

[WladiYoga]

As you say, it is a balance, and in a balance you cannot prefer one thing over the other, you need to balance them out 50/50. There is no overall approch thats right or wrong. You can only minimize risk and maximaze your skill