Poker Puzzles: Solve Real Hands, One Decision at a Time
Poker puzzles work like chess puzzles: one real hand, one decision, and an answer that comes with its reason. You get the position, your cards, the board and the action so far; you choose, then you see why one option is better. The three hands below climb from easy to hard. Solve them in order, and keep the 4-question method under them for every new spot.
Puzzle 1 (easy): defend the big blind
You are in the big blind with K♣9♦. The button raises to 2 big blinds and the small blind folds. Fold, call or 3‑bet?
Puzzle 2 (medium): a big draw on the turn
You are in the big blind with 8♠7♠ on T♠ 6♦ 2♠, then 5♥ on the turn. You called the flop; the button now bets 60% of the pot. Fold, call or check‑raise?
Puzzle 3 (hard): a river with nothing
On the button with A♦3♦, you bet the flop and the turn on K♦ 9♣ 5♦ 7♥, and the river 2♣ misses your flush. The big blind checks for the third time. Check, bet small, bet half pot, or overbet?
The 4-question method
- Where am I? Your position and who acts after you on the next streets.
- What can they have? The range their actions allow, not one hand.
- What does my hand do against that range? Best hand, draw, bluff‑catcher, or nothing.
- Which action and size get the most from it? Value, protection, bluff, or a free card.
Why puzzles make you better faster
A puzzle isolates the decision: no waiting for good cards, no luck hiding a mistake. Seeing the reason right after you choose is what turns a guess into a rule you will reuse at the table.
The three hands above come from a library of 647 puzzles in 8 chapters, counted on 15 October 2026 by tallying the app's puzzle data. By the author's difficulty tags, 158 are beginner, 230 intermediate and 259 advanced; by the street of the decision, 105 are preflop, 166 on the flop, 193 on the turn and 183 on the river. So more than half are turn or river decisions, the ones that come up less often at the table and take longest to learn by playing alone.
Keep going
- More decisions with explanations: the poker quiz.
- River decisions only: what would you do in these poker hands.
- The math behind the draw in puzzle 2: pot odds.
- Find your level first: the poker skill test.
- A puzzle every day: our free poker trainer.
- A new puzzle every day: the daily poker puzzle.
- Before you bluff, the threshold to beat: how often a bluff needs to work.
Sources
- Hands from the curated Poker Puzzle Trainer corpus (October 10, 2026); answers following rules written by the app's author, not solver outputs.