Lab Cash Game Quiz Answers & Explanations

Here are the questions, answers, and explanations from our Lab cash game quiz.

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Question #1

🔲 Fold

🔲 Call

✅ 4-Bet

When you face a 3-bet after raising first in, you will want to build the pot by 4-betting with the top of your range. This allows you to get as much value as possible.

You will need to balance out those hands by 4-betting light because only 4-betting with premium hands will make your opponent’s life far too easy (they can just fold a lot). Small suited Aces are usually the best candidates with which to do so.

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Question #2

🔲 Fold

✅ Call

🔲 4-Bet

76s is an easy call versus a good player’s 3-bet blind vs blind. It has great playability and solid equity, especially against a wide big blind range.

4-betting is a somewhat reasonable option, though you should tend to do so with hands that have good blockers like the A5s in the previous question.

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Question #3

✅ Fold

🔲 Call

🔲 3-Bet

Based on their decisions to raise UTG and call versus a UTG raise from the cutoff, both players have a tight ranges of hands. Calling is out of the question against such ranges.

Even though you have good blockers to their continuing range, squeezing will simply not make them fold enough of the time or get enough value postflop to make up for the times that you get 4-bet and are forced to fold or miss the flop or get in a cooler situation postflop.

If one or both of the players in the hand were notably weak, calling and/or squeezing would likely be fine.

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Question #4

🔲 Check

✅ Bet

This board doesn't hit the Big Blind’s range super hard, so the Button can bet with a pretty wide range of hands here.

On top of this, you still have outs to a top pair or a backdoor straight. Plus, this hand functions well as a barrel on many run outs because it usually won't block the folding range.

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Question #5

✅ Check

🔲 Bet

Betting is suboptimal because this board connects extremely well with the Big Blind’s defending range. You are not denying a lot of equity by doing so. Plus, you'd be putting money in a pot that you are very unlikely to win either right now or later.

On top of this, you should actually want to see a free turn with this hand because it keeps all of the Big Blind's worse Ax and Qx in the hand, improving your implied odds. For example, when you hit a Queen on the turn, you will be able to win one or two bets from a hand like Q9, which would have folded on the flop.

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Question #6

✅ Check

🔲 Bet

Checking with this hand makes the most sense because you won't deny much equity or get much extra value by betting.

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Question #7

🔲 Check

✅ Bet

This check on the turn from the Big Blind likely means he’s giving up, but almost every hand in his range has two overcards to your 66. Therefore the best play is to bet small to deny equity and possibly get value (from a hand like A5s).

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Question #8

✅ Check

🔲 Bet

Your hand is insufficiently strong to bet for value on the turn and river, which in this case means it serves best as a check. You can look to bluff-catch by calling a bet on most rivers, or you can go for value yourself if the Big Blind checks again.

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Question #9

🔲 Check

✅ Bet

T8 is one of the lowest ranking hands in your range on this run out, which means you should bluff with it pretty much every time in order to balance out your value betting range and take advantage of the times your opponent folds.

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Question #10

✅ Check

🔲 Bet

On this run out, the Big Blind will have many better hands with which to call a bet, which makes a profitable value bet nearly impossible with this hand.

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