Optimal Olivia: the hardest player at the table to exploit

1. Who Optimal Olivia is

Olivia is the one seat at the table that isn't trying to have a personality. In No-Limit Hold'em she plays from our solver-derived library wherever it holds an exact answer, and from our own engine everywhere else. That works out to about four decisions in ten: most preflop choices, some flops, almost nothing multiway or in a limped pot, because the library was solved heads-up. We call the result GTO-Lite. Not GTO, not perfect, and not unbeatable, because none of those would be true.

You have met her, or more likely failed to notice her. She is the quiet regular two seats over who plays the same way at two in the morning as at eight in the evening and turns over hands you had not put her on. Nobody at the table has a story about her. At the end of the night she is up a little — and the player who is up a lot is the one who spent the session eating the two bad players alive.

2. Optimal Olivia at a glance

The more interesting fact isn't in the table. Olivia doesn't try to exploit anybody, and a strategy built to be hard to beat is not a strategy built to punish bad players. At a table full of bad players, the second one wins more.

3. How Optimal Olivia plays a hand

Preflop. This is where the library covers her most often, so preflop is the most solved part of her game. She never open-limps. She opens a tight range that changes with her seat, and facing a raise she would rather three-bet than flat call. She tightens further when several players are already in, and doesn't talk herself into small pairs and suited connectors. Out of the blinds she defends by price, so a small open gets more resistance than a large one.

Flop. Heads-up in a raised pot is the other place the library answers, so that is where her flop play is sharpest. She bets more often than a neutral player, and her sizes are flat: uncorrelated with her strength and steady from hand to hand. In a multiway or limped pot the library has nothing to say — it was solved for two players — and she plays our engine's solid line instead. You won't be able to tell which is happening.

Turn. Her draw math is the best on the roster, and that cuts both ways. A turn bet sized to make a flush draw fold usually does; a turn bet that prices her in gets called every time. She registers the card that just arrived, and a turn improving the range you have been representing changes her line. She doesn't fire a delayed second barrel merely because the flop checked through.

River. She bets her strong hands rather than trapping with them, so a check from her is rarely a hidden monster. She check-raises about as often as a normal player — seldom, but not never — and she bluffs at a measured rate: not often, but often enough that folding every river to her is its own leak.

4. How to beat Optimal Olivia

Play your solid game and stop hunting for the leak. The usual way a decent player loses money to a balanced opponent is by inventing something to exploit: her small bet means weakness, her check is a trap, a player this tight must fold to a big bet. Each theory costs a pot. Her sizing carries no information, size alone doesn't frighten her, and she doesn't tilt when you take one off her. Against Olivia the winning adjustment is to make no adjustment — play your ranges honestly and give up the pots you haven't earned.

Take the pots she declines to fight for, and don't volunteer for the big ones. Olivia folds a great deal — whenever the price is wrong — and she has no interest in calling to keep you honest. That makes the small uncontested pots genuinely available: steal her blinds, continuation bet when she has shown no strength. The other half is the half that costs money — don't build a large pot against her with a medium hand. Almost everything you lose to Olivia is money you hand over on the turn and river with second best, one reasonable-looking call at a time.

Spend your attention on the other seats. This is real strategy, not a dodge. Your hourly rate comes from the two or three players making large mistakes, and playing extra pots with the one who isn't making any is how a good session turns average. When Olivia has position on you and a marginal spot appears, decline it; she won't punish you for folding.

5. Mistakes people make against Optimal Olivia

• Reading her bet sizing. There is nothing in it. Her sizes are deliberately uncorrelated with her hand and deliberately consistent, so a conclusion drawn from a half-pot bet versus a full-pot bet is a coin flip you have talked yourself into.
• Mistaking tight for scared. A player who enters this few pots looks like someone you can run over, and she isn't one. Size by itself doesn't move her — she folds to bad prices, not big numbers — so the triple barrel that blasts a nit off his hand simply pays her off.
• Copying her. Deciding to play a balanced style because she does is the most expensive mistake here. Her strategy is built to be hard to beat by good players; at a table with two calling stations in it, a solid exploitative game makes considerably more.

6. Practice against Optimal Olivia

Olivia has a seat at Online Grind — a nine-handed 1/2 no-limit game with $200 stacks, alongside Basic Ben, Solid Sam, Agent Arthur, Tight Tom, Aggressive Andy, Loose Lucy and Calling Carl. You don't need an account to sit down; the guest session asks for nothing. A few hundred hands with a balanced opponent in the game is the cheapest way to find out how much of your strategy depends on opponents cooperating. Olivia will not cooperate.

Try without an account, or create a free account if you would like your hands, the coach's verdicts and your own numbers kept.

7. The rest of the table

Olivia is one of eleven, and the one you should quietly avoid rather than study. Calling Carl can't fold a pair and is where most of the money at that table lives. Loose Lucy plays far too many hands and calls too much after the flop. Tight Tom folds to the pressure Olivia absorbs. Agent Arthur, at the same table, is the sound few-leaks engine player, and a different problem again. Telling which of them you are facing inside twenty hands is most of the skill. The full list is on the opponents index.