WPT GTO Trainer Hands of the Week: Defending your Big Blind Against the Button
This week we’re focused on a typical tournament spot where you are out of position against a tough player on the button after calling their raise from the big blind.
There are a few flops where you could construct a leading range from the big blind in this spot, but for the vast majority of flops you can begin by checking to the preflop raiser. This is due to the fact that the preflop aggressor in this spot will typically have an equity advantage.
Keep in mind, however, that the player on the button will have a wide hand range, typically at least 40% of all hands but sometimes much wider. This should cause you to take more hands to showdown in this scenario compared to spots facing narrower villain ranges.
As a general rule, you want to check-raise the button’s continuation bet with some very strong hands and some lower equity draws (backdoor draws, gutshots with overcards, etc) so that your check-raising range is somewhat polarized. You can typically check-call with medium strength hands and draws.
Donk-betting, or leading out when you called the previous street, is usually only viable on equity changing cards. When a card comes that helps your overall hand range significantly, leading can become a good strategy, whether you are actually helped by that card or not.
For more GTO hand analysis, you can play through five free solved random hands from this situation.
Regular play on the WPT GTO Trainer will help you adjust your decisions closer and closer to GTO strategy.
You don’t have to be the world’s best player to use GTO Strategy, and thanks to the WPT GTO Trainer, now you don’t have to buy expensive software or have expert level knowledge to study GTO.
Why use the WPT GTO Trainer?
The WPT GTO Trainer lets you play real solved hands against a perfect opponent in a wide variety of postflop scenarios for cash game and tournament play.
If your goal is to be a tough poker player then you should try the WPT GTO Trainer today.
Register a free account here (it only takes your e-mail address to begin) to play hands and see true GTO strategy in real-time.
The WPT GTO Trainer has over 1 billion unique solved flops, turns and rivers that are fully playable.
As you make decisions in a hand, you receive instant feedback on the specific EV loss (if any) and Played Percentage for every action you take as compared to GTO strategy.
The full selection of scenarios for the WPT GTO Trainer are only available to members of LearnWPT, however we’re giving PokerNews Readers free access to the Trainer on a regular basis with the WPT GTO Hands of The Week.
Use this series of articles to practice the strategies you learn on LearnWPT (or at the table) and test your progress by playing a five-hand sample each week.
