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The Poker Academy Session 5: Deep Stacked, Heads-up, Postflop Play

A Session By Session Look At The Poker Academy's No-Limit Hold'em Tournament Course

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Join us as we take a closer look at the 12-session course from the brilliant strategic minds at The Poker Academy. Every two weeks, Card Player will break down the curriculum from poker pro Rick Fuller and two-time WSOP bracelet winner Rep Porter, to detail the positive impact that The Poker Academy can have on your game.

Sign up today, and win a $1,000 buy-in to a 2016 WSOP event, round-trip airfare to Las Vegas, and a three night stay at the Rio hotel.

Last time we looked at session 4, Deep Stacked, Multi-Way Postflop Play. Let’s move on through the course.

Session 5 — Deep Stacked, Heads-Up, Postflop Play

While the last session focused on deep stacked, multi-way postflop play, this session simplifies the action down to just one single opponent. The first thing site instructors Rep Porter and Rick Fuller explain is the difference between the average winning hand heads-up vs. multi-way. Simply put, the more players you are up against, the stronger your hand needs to be to win at showdown.

From there, the session talks about hand ranges and then each video breaks down the optimal way to play a subset of hands in those ranges. The first focuses on the rare times when you make the absolute nuts. The videos help you to understand your opponent’s situation using context clues to help you maximize value.

The next video focuses on how to play strong hands. These hands are sometimes vulnerable, but they should still be played to extract value depending on your opponent’s line. Porter and Fuller then show how to calculate how many bets your hand will be able to earn.

“Your goal with near nut hands is to get at least three, but not more than four bets into the pot. With a stack to pot ratio (P) of 20 or less, you are happy to play a pot for our stack when you flop a near nut hand.”

After a question and answer session, there are three more videos tackling the ideas behind playing value hands, drawing hands and even hands that completely miss the flop. If the curriculum begins to seem too technical, Porter explains why its absolutely necessary.

“Poker doesn’t have to be boring,” said Porter. “As you become a more experienced player and you get to break out lots of new tools and get to try new things and manipulate situations, there’s a lot to think about and it’s really interesting. But like everything, there’s some basics. And if you don’t understand the basics, you have a hard time putting yourself in a good position to do the fun things.”

Next time, we’ll take a look at Session 6, Short and Medium Stacked Postflop Play.

If you’d like to take your game to the next level, sign up for The Poker Academy today.