I would like to introduce you to Hustler Casino Live. I assume that most of the games they steam are not B&M small stakes. There is plenty of room for exploitative play at higher stakes if you game select well. This is especially true if one has figured out the home game scene (where the best games are, imho).
Online on competitive sites, folks still make have relatively large gaps in their game up to nl100.
On online agent apps… lol, gto is not a thing except at 5/10 and higher (sometimes).
I will add that all of this is a discussion about nlhe.
There is a push to get away from solver-based games online because they are largely bad for the ecology. Casuals get fleeced rapidly, even by folks who implement a “gto” strategy poorly. Just having a good starting hand strategy/chart is usually a huge advantage alone.
The following are some ways that this is happening, and I think that these are the future of poker:
- plo
- more blinds/antes (3 blinds, big blind ante, short deck antes, etc.)
- bomb pots
- double board
- deep stack (most solver work is for 100bb or less)
- mixed games
Plo bomb pots are typically very much loved wherever they are played, and double board adds an extra element of skill. It lets causal gamblers gamble and get action (see every flop!), but there is a huge skill element that is not in solver territory yet.
Any poker scene for which a gto strategy can reasonably be implemented will rapidly wither to a small pecking order of pros. I hope folks in the poker playing community, especially pros and serious casuals, can embrace games where gto theory is not the baseline. It’s healthy for the poker ecology by keeping casuals involved and engaged.