Question about GTO preflop charts

[EnigmaTTO]

I've been looking at some preflop charts on the pokercoaching.com free App and I noticed that, with a 20 bb stack (just cause that's all they offer for free), there are a good few situations where you would, for example, call a raise/3-bet with a suited ace, but shove with an off-suite ace. Or call with a premium hand like AA or KK, but shove JJ and TT, and just call with more middling pocket pairs like 9s through 6s. Is there some kind of reasoning someone could give me to help understand and try to apply charts like these better, or is it just info that a solver spits out that im better of just trying to memorize for the most part?

 

[Tero]

In normal poker (not GTO) AA or KK is a hand which makes you want to induce your opponents to add value to the pot - simply calling might do that. Ax suited in preflop is still a good enough hand to make a call against someone who might hold some pair but if you miss the flop you should re-think your moves.

If you think that your opponent is holding a lower pair or some JT, KQ type of hand then your Ax off-suit or JJ-TT can still be effective against that player in heads up situation but you need to isolate him to improve your odds and that is why showing can be a good move here.

GTO charts are probably more or less generated with solvers but I wouldn't spend too much in trying to learn them by heart.

Like Jonathan Little has said himself in one of his materials - if your opponents are wild loose players, using GTO will not work - or something like that, I don't remember his exact words.

 

[Collin Moshman]

In a sense, what's logical would be: The better your hand, the more likely you should be to play it aggressively.

But there are a couple of reasons to deviate from the above approach. Two main ones:

1. Staying balanced. If you're just calling with a number of weaker hands, putting premium hands in your calling range keeps you unpredictable.

2. Playability. Hands like ATo are often better to 3-bet with because they benefit from pre-flop fold equity so much. Whereas ATs is a more powerful hand to see a flop with.

And then other times, GTO results are just kind of weird and hard to explain

 

[P1R35]

I've been looking at some preflop charts on the pokercoaching.com free app and I noticed that, with a 20 bb stack (just cause that's all they offer for free), there are a good few situations where you would, for example, call a raise/3-bet with a suited ace, but shove with an off-suite ace. Or call with a premium hand like AA or KK, but shove JJ and TT, and just call with more middling pocket pairs like 9s through 6s. Is there some kind of reasoning someone could give me to help understand and try to apply charts like these better, or is it just info that a solver spits out that im better of just trying to memorize for the most part?

Personally I would try to study those ranges (try to find why solver played that way) and not memorize them. Maybe besides opening ranges because they came up frequently (and study how those ranges changes with different stack size).
It will be very hard and ineffective to memorize all spots with different stack sizes.

To you specific example 20bb.

AA/KK is only calling preflop because it helps to strengthen you flatting range ( you don’t only have middle hands like KTs or 77) and it protects your range from get squeezed behind.
It flats those also because they need less protection than TT/JJ ( those don’t wanna see A/K/Q flops). The weaker ones 66-99 probably aren’t profitable re-shoves in that spots (like HJ vs MP).

Suited AX are better flats because they can call more flop bets than offsuited ones ( have better playability). Like with ATs on Jxx you can float (call Villains bet) with back door straight draw/bd flush draw. Where with ATo it will be less profitable.

I hope it helps.