Jonathan Little’s Weekly Poker Hand: Crazy Face-Off on the Turn and River
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 several years ago, and recently he decided to switch up the format to begin featuring footage from live small- and medium-stakes cash games and tournaments.
In the episode shown below, Little returns once more to Stones Gambling Hall in California to analyze a hand from a $5/$5/$10 no-limit hold’em cash game.
The hand begins with the player called The Wolf first to act and he limps in with A♥8♦, a play Little doesn’t recommend. (Just fold such a hand, he suggests.) Robert is next to act and he raises to $50 with A♦Q♠, and it folds to Dave O in the big blind who calls with Q♣8♠.
After having limped The Wolf calls as well, and Little talks about how that, too, isn’t such a good choice following a raise and call. In any case, with $160 in the middle those three saw the flop come 4♦2♥Q♦ to give both Dave O and Robert top pair. It checks to Robert who bets $75, Dave O calls, and The Wolf gets out.
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The turn is the 5♣ and this time Dave O decides to lead for $125 into the $310 pot. Here Little stops to explain how often when players check-call the flop and then lead the turn like this, they will have a marginal made hand (as Dave O does) that is susceptible to being outdrawn.
From there Little discusses how Robert might do well to raise here as an exploitative play when circumstances seem to suggest so strongly his opponent has a marginal made hand.
Robert just calls (still fine, says Little), and with $560 in the pot the river is the 6♥. Dave O quickly bets again — $175 this time — a bet that Little suggests doesn’t really work very well as a bluff given the previous action. Even so, Robert finds it difficult to call, despite the good pot odds.
We’ll stop there and let you see what Robert decided and how Little assessed both players’ play in the hand. Some of the concepts Little discusses in his analysis include:
- starting hand selection (and preflop strategy)
- position
- bluffing
- value betting
- pot odds
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,900,000 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.
