Jonathan Little's Weekly Poker Hand: A Classic, Nitty Hand
Poker pro and coach Jonathan Little has been producing a wide variety of strategy content for poker players for some time, including authoring multiple books and sharing videos and articles on his website and elsewhere, much of which is free to players of all levels seeking to improve their games.
Little started his popular "Weekly Poker Hand" series on YouTube a while ago, using the format to focus on particular concepts and common mistakes as illustrated in his hand analyses.
In the episode shown below, Little celebrates the five-year anniversary of "Weekly Poker Hand" by breaking down a hand from early in a $1,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament, a World Series of Poker event.
With the blinds 75/150, a tight-aggressive player in early position opens to 350 and Little calls with A♣2♣ from the cutoff. The big blind calls as well and after the flop comes A♠Q♥3♣, it checks around to Little.
Here Little weighs the pros and cons of betting, noting how the lack of draws and unlikelihood of getting called by worse hands both help make checking seem the better option.
The turn is the J♠, and it checks to the preflop raiser who bets 500 into the 1,325 pot. Little chooses just to call, recognizing he could well be beat but not wanting to let go of his hand just yet. The big blind folds.
The river brings the 7♠ and this time Little's opponent checks. Here Little decides a value bet might be in order, but with a marginal hand such as this perhaps checking is the better play. What do you think?
Take a look below to see what Little decided and listen to his reasoning. Concepts he discusses along the way include...
- position
- pot control
- board texture
- value betting
- bet sizing
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $7,000,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. Sign up to learn poker from Jonathan for free at PokerCoaching.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
