Jonathan Little's Weekly Poker Hand: An Exploitative Overbet Jam
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 more than five years ago, using the format to focus on particular concepts and common mistakes as illustrated in his hand analyses.
In the episode shown below, Little analyzes a hand he played in a $1,000 buy-in World Series of Poker event that demonstrates an example of making an exploitative play to take advantage of live reads.
Action began with the under-the-gun player raising 2.5x to 250, and as Little explains below, he had a read on this player that strongly suggested he liked his hand. That is to say, the early position raise wasn't the only indicator of this, but Little had picked up something additional to confirm that read.
Another player called and after looking down at A♦4♦ in the cutoff Little called. The big blind called, too, meaning four players saw the flop come K♠8♦7♦.
The big blind checked and the UTG player bet 400 (a little over a third of the pot). The next player folded, then Little called. As he explains, knowing his opponent likely was very strong (e.g., with a premium pocket pair or ace-king), he preferred calling to raising as it was unlikely a raise would get the player to fold.
The big blind folded, and with 1,930 in the pot the turn brought the 2♦ to give Little his flush. The UTG player checked.
Here is where Little saw a chance to exploit his opponent who seemed especially enamored with his hand. The headline gives a clue what he chose to do.)
Take a look at the hand below to hear Little's analysis of the situation and his decision-making. Topics covered in his discussion include:
- image
- live tells
- playing drawing hands
- bet sizing
- value betting
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.
