We are sure you're thinking, "what does my score mean?".

⏭️ Click Here to Jump to the Strategy Breakdown

The way we measure our performance against the Trainer is by tracking "EV Loss" or Expected Value Loss. The best possible result after you pick your action is an EV Loss of 0. This means your action breaks even against a perfect player.

When EV Loss isn’t 0, the number shown is the amount of big blinds that we would lose taking a specific action in the long run.

It is possible to make a poor play (high EV Loss) that results in you winning a specific hand. I’m sure you’ve all seen players make bad plays and win the pot or make the right play and lose the pot. Over time EV Loss will track closer and closer to actual losses.

We only care about EV Loss, we don’t care whether or not we win any one particular hand.

This allows us to have a long term mindset towards poker that focuses on the quality of our decisions and not short term results.

Not a Member? Join now ▼ to play more hands!

Learn The Strategy For The 5 Tournament Hands You Just Played!

This week we are showcasing correct 3-betting strategy in a tournament where you are on the Button against a Middle Position player. With a big blind ante in play MP2 makes a standard opening raise to 2.5BBs, you 3-bet to 7.5BBs, and MP2 calls. The effective stacks are 50BBs to start the hand.

In this scenario the original raiser’s range is only somewhat capped as they will just call with AA preflop with some frequency at this stack depth to mix in slow playing to balance their range. Your opponent will still 4-bet QQ/KK/AK, however unlike scenarios where the preflop caller’s range is completely capped there are some big hands in Middle Position’s range in this scenario. The rest of Middle Position’s range is quite linear and consists mostly of big broadway hands, pairs, suited broadway cards, and a handful of suited connectors and suited aces.

Your range is completely uncapped but also more polarized. You are 3-betting all of your big hands preflop but using a mixed strategy of raising 25% with suited broadways, suited connectors, suited aces, and even some suited gappers and suited kings!

Given that you have the nut advantage on most boards in position with relatively shallow stacks (the starting stack to pot ratio is less than 3), your default strategy is just to continuation bet small with all hands in your range. Even a small bet into this pot applies a lot of pressure to the preflop caller. Middle Position will fight back by check-raising with a higher frequency to try and turn the tables back on you so it’s important to be prepared for that increased aggression and not give up too frequently or you will be exploitable.

Utilizing solid 3-betting ranges in position in tournaments is key to expanding your game and becoming an extremely tough player to play against.

This scenario really demonstrates how being in position gives you a tremendous advantage even over very tough players who are out of position, even with some weaker hands in your polarized range.

See how close you get to 0 EV Loss and high percentage plays, then reread the advice above from the LearnWPT Pros.

Keep practicing
-Team LearnWPT

Play More Hands From This Tournament Spot

LearnWPT.com Platinum Members can play more hands from this Button 3x 3-Bet Vs MP2 Open by clicking here or to play more scenarios just like this use the Trainer Refine Filter to sort by Tournament, Open Raise, or 30 BB Stack Size, select a scenario, and click START SESSION!

If you have any questions regarding this scenario or your results send your questions in via the Ask a Pro feature.

P.S. Learn more about our Membership Tiers by clicking here.