Five free poker trainers, from preflop to the showdown

The first decision of every hand is whether to play it. The preflop trainer deals you two cards and a seat at a six-handed table with everyone before you folded, and you raise or fold. Your answer is checked against the ranges of our position chart: about 10% of hands under the gun and in the hijack, 18% in the cutoff and the small blind, and 31% on the button.

Most of the hands it deals sit near the edge of a range, because that is where the seat decides. After each answer it says from which seats the hand is a raise.

The pot odds trainer gives you a flush draw, a straight draw or both, on the flop or the turn, with a pot and a bet. You call or fold. The right answer comes from two numbers: the share of the pot after your call that the call costs, and the chance that one of your outs comes.

A $40 bet into an $80 pot asks you to win 25% of the time. A flush draw on the turn comes 19.6% of the time, so the call loses money and the answer is fold. When the two numbers are less than 1.5 percentage points apart, either answer counts. Every hand comes from a template whose outs were counted card by card.

Before the pot odds comes the count. The outs trainer gives you two cards and a flop or a turn with a straight draw, a flush draw or both, and asks how many of the cards you cannot see give you a straight or a flush. The answer lists them: the ranks that make the straight, the cards of your suit, and the ones that do both, which count once.

Every out is counted card by card from the cards on the table, and after each answer the trainer gives the chance to hit, on the river or with two cards to come.

With ten big blinds or less, most decisions are all in or fold. The push or fold trainer deals you a hand and a stack between 5 and 15 big blinds, in the small blind with everyone folded to you or in the big blind against an all in. Every answer is checked against our push or fold ranges.

These are the spots of a Spin as the blinds rise, of every hand at an All In or Fold table and of free tournaments that start short, like Basepoker's 10BB Freerolls.

The showdown trainer shows a board of five cards, your two cards and your opponent's two, and you pick the winner or a split pot. Each player makes the best five cards out of seven, and the answer shows which five play and why the better hand wins.

About a third of the hands it deals are the same kind of hand on both sides, where the kickers decide, and about one in ten is a split pot, often because the board plays for both players.

Ten hands of one trainer before a session take a few minutes. Read the explanation after every answer you got wrong, because that is where the trainer teaches. The score stays until you leave the page, and nothing is stored.