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

• View The Strategy Behind The Correct Answers Below

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.

Learn The Strategy For The 5 Cash Game Hands You Just Played!

Today we’re focused on a typical cash game spot where you’re out of position against a tough player on the Button after making a 3BB preflop raise from MP2.

Your range in middle position is uncapped and consists of around 17% of hands. While the Button’s range is capped, it is actually narrower than yours (only around 11% of hands). This creates an interesting dynamic where you have more of the strongest hands in your range but the Button has a stronger range overall.

Since the Button’s 3-betting range has many of their stronger Ax/Kx hands, your range is likely to contain far more Ax and Kx hands in this spot. The result is that on Ace and King high boards you will often get to bet with your entire range, while on many of the other boards that favor the Button you will have to be much more careful with how you construct your continuation betting range.

Continuation betting will still be viable with many of your stronger hands that benefit from protecting their equity, as well as many unmade hands that have significant equity such as two overcards plus a backdoor flush draw. You will need to proceed cautiously with the remaining combos in your range, especially on boards that favor the preflop caller.

When you check more frequently a good opponent on the Button will be utilizing big sizing, and sometimes even overbets, to target your capped range and force you off middling holdings. You will be forced to defend some of those middling holdings with significant showdown value in order to not be exploitable when you check the flop, even when facing large bets. Balance this out by checking the flop with some stronger holdings that don’t benefit from protection, such as top pair with top kicker on a dry board.

Overall this scenario is very tough given you are out of position against a good player with a narrower range. You will be able to continuation bet on some boards that favor your range, however other spots are going to involve having to make some tough decisions while out of position.

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

P.S. LearnWPT Members can play more hands from this scenario by clicking here.