WPT GTO Trainer Hands of the Week: MP2 5x Open Vs BTN Call
This week you’ll be practicing a very common situation in Small Stakes cash games. A primary feature of Small Stakes games is that larger open raise sizes are typical. For example, in a local $1-2 home game, the open raise will be often $10 or more.
In this spot, you’ll be open-raising to this larger 5BB raise size preflop from Middle Position with our opponent calling on the Button.
The larger preflop raise size causes the Stack to Pot Ratio (SPR) to be lower here than in other cash games with 100BB stacks. Recognizing how larger preflop raise sizing drastically impacts SPR on the flop is critical adjustment to understand when playing in Small Stakes games.
With the lower SPR, the in position player having a nut advantage is less important than at deeper stacks. When one player has more big hands than an opponent with deep starting stacks, the threat of those big hands causes strategic adjustments across all streets. As the SPR decreases, this concept becomes less important.
However, you will still want to check with many hands if the flop clearly favors the caller over the raiser. Against tough players, you should not c-bet with a 100% frequency here. Against weaker players, you can simply c-bet all of the time. They won’t play back at you often enough to make that strategy unprofitable.
Overpairs have a lot of value heads up, especially with the lower SPR. You should often bet larger amounts with these hands and your bluffs to balance. You can typically get lots of value from your opponent’s top pair hands in these Small Stakes spots.
To see more examples and test your skills, you can play through five free solved hands from this scenario.
To access the free five hands, visit this page.
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 2 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.
Sponsor-generated content from LearnWPT
