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!

This week we’re focusing on a small stakes cash game spot where you are out of position against a tough opponent on the Button who 3-bet your 5BB open under the gun to 15BBs.

In a small stakes cash game with an opening raise to 5BBs, first-in hand ranges start quite a bit narrower than in more traditional games with an opening raise size to 3BBs. Consequently, once you open in early position and are 3-bet your range in this situation is very narrow and quite condensed, consisting almost entirely of mid pocket pairs and some high suited broadway cards.

Your range is also capped. In contrast, the Button’s range is highly polarized consisting mostly of either very strong hands or weaker hands with significant preflop blockers and is uncapped.

A typical strategy out of position against a polarized range is to play quite passively and get to controlled showdowns in order to keep the bluffing hands in your opponent’s range. While this is still often valid in this scenario, with the large opening raise size and 3-bet the stack to pot ratio (SPR) is fairly low at less than 3.

With the increased pot size in relation to stacks you actually have a fairly robust leading range on many flops, utilizing some mixed leading strategies particularly on middling boards where your hand benefits greatly from equity denial.

Hands such as a middle pocket pair that is an over pair to the board is a good example of this, as overcards can be quite dangerous for you, and the pot is already large enough that protecting your equity starts to take priority over inducing bluffs from your opponent.

One of the bigger mistakes you can make in this scenario is being too sticky on Ace and King high boards. Your opponent’s range contains so many Ax and Kx hands, so much so that even many of their bluffs are Axs/Kxs hands.

That means hands as strong as second pair can’t be continued with on these boards, even against a small continuation bet.

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 Platinum and Gold Members can play more hands from this scenario by clicking here.