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

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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.

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

This week we’re focused on a tournament scenario where you are out of position against a tough player on the Button who defends your 2BB open raise from early position

Your range as the first-in raiser is uncapped and fairly narrow. It takes only a few bets and raises postflop to become committed with 20BB stacks. While your range is skewed to very strong hands as well as some hands that play well out of position postflop, it isn’t as nearly as wide as it would be with much deeper stacks.

The Button’s range is also uncapped which is not typical for a preflop caller. At this stack depth they are likely to flat AA/KK, as the risk of having a big multiway pot is lessened on the Button and stacks can easily get in postflop anyway. Adding some premium hands to this flatting range protects some of the more marginal hands. The rest of the calling range is quite condensed and includes many middling cards including combos of Jx/Tx, middle pairs, and suited connectors.

Since your opponent’s range hits middling flops so well you will often be checking Jack and Ten high boards, even when you hit a big hand, given how substantial the Button’s overall range advantage on these boards. Checking is also preferred on coordinated boards with middling cards such as 9-8-4. On dry boards that are Ace, King, or Queen high you will be continuation betting frequently as those boards hit your range more often. Unless the Button slowplayed AA/KK exactly, they will be in a very tough spot with shallow stacks on those dry boards.

Playing range vs range poker at this stack depth and in this situation becomes extremely important. If you are betting top pair hands on ten high boards but checking and folding the rest of the combos in your range you will become quickly exploitable by your opponent. Maintaining a balance between checking and betting the appropriate flops with most of your range is primarily how this scenario differs from many of the other, deeper stacked scenarios where you have more options available.

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 Members can play more hands from this UTG+1 Open Vs Button Call pack by clicking here or to play more scenarios just like this use the Trainer Refine Filter to sort by Tournament, Open Raise, or 20 BB Stack Size, select a scenario, and click START SESSION!

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