If you have been paying attention to the books and instructional videos on tournament poker that have come out in recent years, one acronym must have caught your eye: GTO (Game Theory Optimal). This is not a term specific to poker, since this optimum is the culmination of studies begun as early as the 19th century by Antoine Augustin Cournot, then intensified in the 1920s by Émile Borel and John von Neumann, who in 1944 published with Oskar Morgenstern the founding work of game theory, *Theory of Games and Economic Behavior*. It starts from the premise that any actor making a decision in order to maximize their gain must know that there is always an optimal decision, one that beats all the others.
The first bet in Hold'em poker
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Let's set the scene: a poker tournament with six players per table. Depending on their position, players have different names.
The first round of betting is simple. The small blind (or SB, for small blind) has staked a predetermined amount, and the big blind (or BB, for big blind) double that amount. Then each player receives two cards. The red "D" chip stands for "dealer." Betting begins.
