
The Tournament Poker Edge Podcast
The Tournament Poker Edge Podcast
October 10, 2025 -- Unlock a Jaka! Breaking News
Clayton Fletcher (@claytoncomic) makes a big announcement about a terrific new partnership. Then, a hand history review from a bracelet event he played on WSOP.COM
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Welcome to the Tournament Poker Edge Podcast. It's brought to you by Tournament Poker Edge.com, the only podcast dedicated exclusively to poker tournament strategy. Now here's your host, Clayton Fletcher.
SPEAKER_04:Hello, once again, everybody, and welcome to the Tournament Poker Edge Podcast. Presented by Dapper Coaching. For on that in a minute, my name is Clayton Fletcher, and I am in Sunny, Scenic, Tampa, Florida. Happy to be bringing you yet another episode of the world's longest running poker strategy podcast. Big news to announce right here at the top of the show this week, as we have formed an alliance with Jocka Coaching. You guys know Farraz Jocka, literally one of the top tournament players in the whole world for the last 20 years. And he's been building a coaching site for the last few years that is truly extraordinary. One-on-one coaching. He's got hundreds of training videos. They're organized by topic and skill level. And there's hand quizzes to help you find and plug your leaks. We all know, guys, that the TPE website hasn't been uh updated, shall we say, in several years. And we all love Jocka and they love us, so we wanted to give you guys an offer to help you give Jocka Coaching a try. You can get seven days absolutely free and save 20% off your membership by clicking the link and using our promo code TPE. Now, this is extraordinary because right now we're literally the only place anywhere in the world where you can get a discount on Jocka Coaching. It's a great site. I think you guys will like it. Try it for free for a whole week. Click the link, use TPE as your promo code, and get started today. As I mentioned, guys, I'm here in Florida. It's beautiful, it's sunny. I'm performing at Side Splitters Comedy Club. It's a really cool place. It used to be a multiplex with nine movie theaters inside, and now it's a multiplex with eight movie theaters inside and one comedy club. And you can still order popcorn or get drinks or whatever. If you are in the Tampa area, I'm there all weekend. I had a great show last night. We still have shows tonight, Friday, the 10th of October, and two shows Saturday. You can get your tickets at ClaytonFletcher.com. Alright, let's talk about last week's strategy segment, guys. I want to jump in here because we went over a hand that I played that I didn't actually remember playing, by the way, in the Venetian Seniors event,$1,100 buy-in over the summer. And in the hand, the blinds were$1,000 with a$1,500 big blind ante. I had 48k in my stack, so 32 big blinds. I want to review this same hand again. You guys should remember it from last week, but I'm going to use GTO Wizard, the solver that I love to use to go over my hands. I want to talk about what we did. The registration period has ended. A lag, a Costa Rican guy opens from the low jack, and I'm in the big blind with the Jack of Spades, 10 of Spades. And I remember on last week's episode, I said maybe that you could three bet once in a while with this hand, like it's a decent candidate at this stack depth. But what I didn't know is that GTO Wizard was actually going to say there's a heck of a lot of squeezing in this spot. So I actually forgot the caller. So the original raise is the low jack and the high jack, another loose player, by the way, makes the call. Both of these guys have me covered. So my 32 big blinds is the effective stack, and I'm in the big blind with the Jack 10 suited. The solver wants to shove the whole 32 big blind stack, the whole 48k right in the middle, 56% of the time, and call the rest. So there are no other sizings offered here. We're either going to shove or we're just gonna call. We're not gonna make it five big blinds or seven big blinds or anything like that. So I found this fascinating, and I wanted to see what the rest of the squeeze shove range looks like. And it's some hands that you might expect, like Ace King off and pocket tens, but there's also pocket nines, and there's also King Nine suited, which why? I don't know, and Jack 10 suited, and that's about it for the shoving range. So we're only shoving less than 3% of all hands, but this is the range for doing that. This is the balanced range. I guess Jack 10 suited just does well enough when called. Obviously, if we shove here, we don't want to get called by anything, but it does well enough against that calling range to make shoving profitable most of the time. So just wow, I did not see that one coming. And why is King 9 suited in there? I don't know. I understand the king blocks kings and ace king, but what is the nine doing for us exactly? I don't really know, but it's in there, and that's why we trust the wizard because the wizard knows better than we do. So anyway, I just called, which I think is what I would do more than 56% of the time, maybe all the time, and so I need to start finding those shoves with this stack size in the future. But I called, and the flop comes King of Spades, Seven of Spades, Four of Diamonds, which gives us a flush draw, and I decided to check. And the low jack bets 4k into 11.5. The other guy now calls, and I made it 16,500, leaving myself with another 30k behind. Uh, the original razor shoves here and the other guy folds, and now it's on me. I obviously made the call, but I turned out to be in terrible shape as Villain showed the ace of spades, four of spades. So he's got a pair and a better flush draw, and I'm just sitting here with Jack High. I end up losing the hand, but let's hear what the solver thinks. Consulting with GTO Wizard, the solver actually likes my raise on the flop 70% of the time. We are supposed to make a raise of about 4x the original bet, which I love. And we can also call totally fine, over call with the Jack 10 suited here, and then when I do get raised and villain shoves on me here, I'm never fold. We have too good of a hand. The the Jack High flush draw is always calling once we make this play. So it seems like from the beginning of the hand, my play is solver approved, and I'm just glad that it's okay to do what I did in this situation because, guys, I don't even remember playing this tournament. It was at the end of a long summer, and I guess this one just kind of escaped my memory. It was sometime in between the main event in which I did not make it to day two, and the WPT Venetian Championship, in which I made day four. So big difference there, and this tournament just kind of falls out of my brain. I have no recollection of these opponents or or anything. I just rely on my notes that I take while I'm playing because I honestly do not remember this at all. But I'm glad the wizard approves, you know, GTO Wizard, it's my solver of choice. It really is uh very easy to use. I've actually noticed as I've been using Jocka coaching for the last couple months that Faraz and all of his coaches that he has on the site, all of them are excellent. They make great videos, really easy to understand. But what a lot of them do is they'll use a solver to help as a teaching tool. So they'll explain why they do what they did and then they'll show the you know GTO solution or whatever. And many of the coaches do use GTO Wizard as their solver of choice. I can see why it's easy, it's user-friendly, truly the best tool for studying and improving your game. And if you want to try it out, I've got a great offer there too. A 24 hour free trial and 10% off your first order if you use our affiliate link, which is gtowizard.com slash P slash T P E. Okay, let's talk about another hand, and this one I played very recently. It looks like we are finished with the hands that I wanted to do on the podcast from the summertime, and I have a hand I actually played just five days ago, guys, on WSOP online. So there's a bracelet series going on throughout the month of October, and they had an event on my way home from Canada. I stopped in the great state of Pennsylvania. Actually, I was in Williamsport, PA, which is the home of the Little League World Series. And as a baseball fan and a baseball player my whole life, including in Little League when I was a boy, it's kind of cool for me to see all of the historic Little League stuff around Williamsport and the fields where they actually play on ESPN every summer. So that's kind of cool. But really, I was there to take a break from the long drive home and get some poker in. I streamed this on my Twitch page, which is twitch.tv slash Clayton Comic. Shout out to all of you who hung out and played in the TPE free roll and watched me play in the bracelet event, the$500 Deep Stack, and several other events on WSOP online. I had fun hanging out with you guys. I like kind of taking the reins of the TPE free roll every so often, giving Derek Killingbird Tenbush a break and interacting with TPE Nation, as we like to call it. So yeah, I appreciate you guys coming on and supporting the stream. And I'm gonna have a lot more events coming up for our subscribers. And I'm hoping I can even get a chance to play in another bracelet event or two on WSOP.com. So make sure you're following me, twitch.tv slash Clayton Comic. All right, a lot of emotional highs and lows took place in Williamsport. I felt like a kid, little league baseball team, striking out, and uh it was just so bad. I'm in Williamsport. Every time I try to lay down a bunt, it's getting popped up, and the pitcher catches it. I'm striking out, it's not good. The uh bracelet event in particular, I had 70,000 chips in my stack when the average was like 56k, so I was doing fine. I had like over a hundred big blinds, we were just killing it, and I was cruising along really early, still several hours remaining, or at least two hours anyway, in late registration, and I got into a pre-flop raising war where we ended up getting all in with pocket aces versus pocket queens, and if my hand had held up, I was going to have 300 big blinds at a table where most of my opponents had like 30 or 40 big blinds, and you know, for me, that is an ideal situation. I can put a man to a decision with a stack like that. And guys, I had the best hand on the turn, and he rivered a queen. Apologies for the bad beat story, but it's really to set up what happened next, okay? Because I continued to play in several other tournaments, including a$55 mystery bounty tournament that they actually do every Sunday. It's got a 30k guarantee, really nice tournament. I was doing fine. The blinds were 200, 400, and this is after my bust out in the other tournament. So I was being really careful not to be on tilt, not to let that affect me or whatever. I think I bought into a few more things, busted out of a couple things. I had two or three tournaments still going at this time, but again, I had 24k up from a starting stack of 10k with 240 players remaining out of 480 total entries, still an hour left in late registration, about an hour and a half to two hours away from bounty time. So, but I'm doing well. The average was around 20k. So, yeah, we were doing fine. We had 60 big blinds, M of 24, and pretty comfortable at my table. And again, 200-400. We have 24k. We opened under the gun with Pocket Queens, the Queen of Spades, Queen of Hearts, and only the tournament chip leader, the overall first place tournament chip leader, calls in position on the button. He's got over 50,000 in his stack. I thought I was doing well. This guy's got 120 big blinds. He's been loose aggressive, he's been heavily involved, and I've never seen him before on any WSOP.com endeavor. So I just have the last couple hours to go on, but yeah, he strikes me as the aggressive type. So again, we have Pocket Queens heads up out of position against the chip leader on the button, and with 2550 in the middle, the flop comes ace of hearts, ten of spades, nine of clubs. So ace 109 rainbow hero with uh pocket queens, queen of spades, queen of hearts. So we check and let's talk about this decision first off, guys. You might say, well, Clayton, if you see Bet here, you can kind of find out where you're at and you know keep the lead in the hand, maybe get him to fold a hand that he might otherwise bluff with if you check and all that. And totally valid, guys. But when I check here, I'm really protecting my range. What villain may not know is that I'm also going to be checking my ace king, ace queen, uh a lot of my ace X. I'm gonna be checking the vast majority of all my hands. I don't really think I'll be betting very often on this flop. It might be a slightly better flop for my range, but the fact that Villain has made the call in position makes me want to check to him. As a general rule, you want to check to the button quite often, way more often than if the call had come from the big blind and we had position. So when you are out of position, it's usually wise to check to the player who is in position, even if you were the one who had been the pre-flop razor. So I do check here, but I'm not gonna fold when he just bets 900 into 2550. No, no, no. We call, we're going to protect our range. We've probably got the best hand, even when he makes this bet. And now we're going to the turn, and with 4350 in the middle, the turn comes the Jack of Hearts. So pretty spicy card here. It puts three to a straight on board, which you know, seven eight, I guess, is theoretically possible. Uh, King Queen is certainly possible, but we have two of the queens, so we block the nuts, which is kind of important. It also brings a backdoor diamond flush draw, and we don't have any diamonds in our hand. We've now got an open-ended straight draw, 9-10 Jack Queen. So a lot going on with this card. I don't know. Maybe we should mix in some bets on the stream. You can actually watch the video if you're watching this on Friday or Saturday. Twitch videos stay up for one week. You can actually watch this hand on my page if you want. I've got the Queens and you can hear me talking out loud. What should we do? Should we bet this card? We we are suddenly open-ended and we do block the nuts. But is that turning Queens into a bluff? And do we really need to do that? Or should we just check and call another bet? Obviously, if villain bets the turn, we're not folding because of course we've just got too much going on. So I'm sitting here with the Queens and I'm mulling my options. It happens at 146 on the video that was released last Sunday, October 5th, if you want to watch that on my Twitch channel, which is free. So anyway, I did eventually check back to him and see if he wants to bet again on 4th Street, and Villain checks behind. So would he do that with a set? Right? If he had a hand like Pocket Nines on the flop of ace 10-9. Does he check it back when that scary turn card comes in, completing a couple of straights? Or does he bet again? I think most players would actually bet again and probably even call if I check Rays. So I thought he probably doesn't have a set when he checks behind. He probably doesn't have a very strong hand at all. He might not even have a pair of aces at this point. But if he has a hand like, I don't know, let's say ace five suited, and it's not diamonds, then he might not want to bet the turn card. He might want to pot control now that I called him on the flop, and he can maybe go for value on the river with a hand like ace X, one pair. So when he checks, that's kind of what I put him on at best. Like top of his range, he's capping his range out at this point, and I think the best he's ever going to show up with at this point is probably just one pair aces. So the river comes the six of hearts. So not really a very consequential card. I mean, if you think, well, the seven eight got there, but the seven eight had already gotten there on the jack on the turn. So it's basically a total brick, it doesn't complete the flush. So I start talking through my process. My first thought was maybe I do have a value bet now. Like, can he call me with a hand like King 10, right? Like a pair of tens. Maybe 9.8 suited. What a pair of nines call a small value bet. And yeah, I think they do pay off some of the time, especially if I keep it really tiny. The downside of betting small then becomes I get value owned by all of his ace X, of which I think he's got a lot, right? He might even have Ace King sometimes, guys, because you know we were pretty deep to start this hand, and maybe he doesn't want to three bet and try to get it in with like 60 big blinds pre-flop, which it's profitable to do so, but it might not always be the best way to play, especially in a tournament. So we can't even rule out a hand as strong as Ace King. But when he doesn't bet the turn, I don't think he has two pair or better very much. So therefore, maybe we should go for a bluff catch. Like, what if he has a draw of some sort? I don't know what that would be though. Most of the draws came in, maybe a gut shot, a hand like King Jack, but that hand actually turns a pair. So it's hard to even think of what type of draw he might have. So I didn't think that I could really turn my hand into a bluff catcher very much, because as loose and aggressive as Villain has been, I'm not really sure he's going to try to value bet a worse one pair hand on this river. So does he really want to bet King 10, a pair of 10s for value? I really didn't think so. So I didn't really know how I could turn my hand into a bluff catcher. But what I decided to do was check. And I think many times when villain checks behind, I'm just gonna win the hand against whatever the heck he's got. King 10, 10-8 suited, whatever, right? I'm gonna win when he checks behind. But when he bets, he's either going to have a straight or just a pair of aces. And again, I didn't really think I could figure out too many bluffs that he would have that would bet this river as a bluff because they King Jack is the first bluff I can think of, and that hand now has a pair, probably enough showdown value to just check back when I check. So when he bets, he's probably got either a straight or a pair, one pair, aces specifically, ace king, ace five suited, whatever. So I check, and now villain bets 2900, about two-thirds of the pot, and I'm concerned that he could have a straight with eight seven or with king queen, but then when I thought about it a little bit more, King Queen I block, so I'm less worried about King Queen than I am by 8-7. And wouldn't 8-7 want to bet for value on the turn? Because remember, that jack on the turn gives him the bottom end of a straight, so he doesn't get his straight on the river, he got it on the turn when he has that hand, and so the fact that my man did not bet on 4th Street and the fact that I have two queens empowered me to check raise on the river, turning my queens essentially into a bluff. I don't think that I can name a hand that can call me that queens are actually beating, but because I didn't think villain could have the nuts very much, or even close to it when he doesn't bet on 4th Street, I raised it up to 16,000, leaving myself with only about 6k behind. And villain folded. Now let's talk about my sizing here. He bets 2900. I go 5x that sizing, a little bit more, 5.5x. And I really don't want him to hero me with the ace X I think he might have. I think it's very difficult for him to call with ace 5 or ace 4 suited. I think it's very hard for him to call with even with a hand as strong as ace king. He might even fold a hand like 10-9. Because what the heck am I check-raising with? I'm clearly representing King Queen with this play, and what we need to ask ourselves is would Clayton actually play the nuts this way? And guys, I'm here to tell you I would. Remember, on the flop, I start off with a check. Check and call a small bet. And so from there, had I turned the nuts on that Jack of Diamonds turn, wouldn't I have checked again and hope that villain has an ace and wants to try to get value? Hope maybe he's even got a set. And I might go for a check raise on the turn, right? That's totally sensible. But if villain checks the turn, I'm not going to bet a straight on the river. No, sir. I'm gonna go for a check raise, just like I did here with the queens. So if you can do it as a bluff, you can do it for value. You are balanced, and I'm pretty sure this is how I would have played King Queen. Instead, I just had Queen Queen, and I'm pretty sure, based on how long it took him to fold, that I got villain to get rid of an ace X type of hand. I think other hands would have folded a lot faster. This guy went into the time bank, and I think he probably had ace something in this spot, maybe even a little better. Who knows? Maybe he had 10-9. I don't really know. But I left myself 6k behind. Now, the reason we do this is because look, if he happens to find the call button, like maybe he's got 8-7. I'm not gonna bluff him off of 8-7, he's going to tank call with that hand close to 100% of the time. So if I run into that particular hand and he played his straight in a strange way on 4th Street, certainly when the flush draw comes in, remember, guys, that Jack of Diamonds on the turn is backdoor diamonds. So it's a little odd for him not to bet a straight. But yeah, if I run into some big hand that's kind of unexpected, perhaps played in an unorthodox way, then yes, I'm going to lose the pot. Right? He's either going to re-raise or he's going to call and own my soul. Then I want to be able to continue playing in the tournament. Leaving myself 6k behind means that I will have 15 big blinds on the next hand, and I can try to pick up the broken pieces of my shattered life and continue and perhaps reign supreme when all is said and done. As it turned out, I didn't cash in this tournament, I didn't cash in the bracelet event, I didn't cash in the Sunday major, and I didn't cash in the free roll. I took an 0 for 7 on the day, and it was just as painful as it sounds. And here's hoping that my next online session goes a lot better than that. And that's gonna do it for this episode. Hope to see some of you guys at Side Splitters in Tampa, the Wesley Chapel location, all weekend long. Make sure you guys sign up for Jocka Coaching, get yourself a seven-day free trial, and let me know what you think. Don't forget to use the promo code TPE. And for everyone here, I'm Tornament Poker Edge with special thanks to Jocka Coaching, our partner. I'm Clayton Fletcher. Thank you so much for listening.