However your main point, that GTO can not be exploited, is correct.
People get enamored by theory but forget that the theory depends on subtle details and preconditions that often don't apply in the real world, and end up coming to conclusions that are sound on paper but will not hold up in reality.
You are not guaranteed a draw in poker if you play optimally, you can still lose. It is true that being unexploitable and playing optimally yields a expectation of at least 0 (assuming no rake/fee), but expectation over an infinite number of trials is not the same as guaranteeing a draw.
There is also variance, which can cause sufficient losses in the short run and given that in the real world people only have a finite amount of resources with which to participate, a sufficiently high variance can knock you out of the competition before you ever get a chance to realize the benefit of a long term positive (or even zero) expectation.
In heads up poker, GTO is worst case zero EV. Obviously this does not mean that the worst case in a single hand is a $0 payout - that is a fairly absurd straw man. I can play Federer at tennis for one point and it is possible he will lose. There is nothing interesting in that statement.
As far as chess is concerned, it's unknown what perfect play yields, but if a round of chess consists of playing white once and playing black once, then a perfect game of chess is guaranteed to do no worse than a draw as you say.
The term GTO is used exclusively for poker, you won't find that term used for any other game, gambling or otherwise. I can see how the mixing of games and terminology could result in me misinterpreting what you meant though.
>In heads up poker, GTO is worst case zero EV. Obviously this does not mean that the worst case in a single hand is a $0 payout - that is a fairly absurd straw man.
The strawman is thinking that if EV is zero or even positive, then you only need to worry about a single hand or even a few hands.
On the contrary EV can positive or even infinite and yet you can still be guaranteed to lose in the long run due to variance:
