Against real players you also use winrate maximization strategies when you play tournaments and there are concepts of icm.
Playing the bots is good way to learn general betsizing and lines but It may still be quite difficult to learn these;
- card removal & blocking effects
- direct & implied odds
- counting combinations
- range composition in general
- analyzing population tendecies (need data)
I think if you just emulate the gto play without understanding the range composition & frequencies, it can be quite bad. Once you do understand how the gto ranges are made then you can easily come up with the more or less exploitative strategies and ranges as well.
Id recommend focusing on your data science until you have time to really work on your poker game as in;
- investing in a solver ie pio solver
- investing in tracking/database software ie pt4
- investing in a gto analyzer/trainer ie instagto
- investing or otherwise obtaining gto preflop ranges
- investing or otherwise obtaining exploitative pf ranges
- investing in optional ui software
- some coaching (preferable)
Ideally you would want to get the software setup above and just play some 150-300k hands online to analyze your game and to establish your winrates. You don't need to play mid/high stakes to do this but you need to track your hands, stats and strategies.
It's important to play a lot to get a feel for the variance and to establish the winrate before you go playing for big stack in the live games. It is also important to invest in solvers and become quite good at making ranges and counting odds/combinations if you plan to make ALOT of money from poker and to play in games with solid regs.
Therefore i would advise to focus on your career until you have ~2-3k and some 50-100+ hours/month to invest into playing & studying the game. It's better to spend 2k on software and start grinding micros than allocating a big portion of your roll to play games with indeterminate winrates.
I guess that at 50h a month it will take the avg person about a year of consistent work to get the samples you need to start transitioning to games where you can make a living and you will also build a roll in the process of learning and establishing winrates.
When you have winrates you can manage your money very effectively based on kelly criterion.
I don't advise deviating from this plan because it will be very stressful for most people.