WPT GTO Trainer Hands of the Week: Playing From the Hijack in Small Stakes
The featured hands this week showcase correct play in a small stakes cash game where you open raise to 5 big blinds in the Hijack seat and are flat called on the Button. This situation is unique from a higher stakes cash game where the opening standard raise size is often 3 big blinds. The higher standard opening raise leads in this small stakes cash game lead to shallower stacks postflop. The reduced risk versus reward on steal attempts means both players will have narrower ranges in this scenario.
The Button has to call a significantly larger percentage of their stack, making their overall range both capped (since they would reraise their strongest hands preflop) and condensed. In fact, the Button range is actually narrower than your opening range for the Hijack seat so on many more coordinated flops the Button will actually have a range advantage, despite you being the preflop aggressor.
As a general rule in this scenario you will see three types of flops. The first are flops that contain at least one high card (Queen, King, or Ace) and unless they are very coordinated, you will often have both a significant range and nut advantage as the preflop raiser with the uncapped range. As a result you often get to continuation bet on the smaller side even with hands that have very little equity.
The second type of flop is a very coordinated one with middling cards. On this flop the Button has a range and nut advantage which will result in you often checking to them, even with hands that have significant equity. Tough players with robust floating and raising ranges on these flops will really punish you for c-betting with too high of a frequency.
The last type of flop is a little more rare given that on uncoordinated flops that contain all low cards neither player has a significant range advantage. The nut advantage is yours in the Hijack by virtue of having far more big pairs than your opponent. Having the nut advantage in these spots means you can really apply pressure to the button by making larger bets, often even with very little equity.
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.
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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
