Taylor "Green Plastic" Caby is an instructor for CardRunners.com.

Even though I primarily play poker in some of the highest stakes games on the internet, I see players make many basic errors. Usually players develop holes in their game while they are playing at the lower stakes games, but they can overcome them to remain a winning player because the competition they play makes even more mistakes than they do! These same players wonder why they repeatedly lose as they move up to the higher limits, but the simple truth is that they are making more mistakes than their opponents. <READMORE> In an effort to help players aspiring to move to the top of the poker ranks, today I am going to discuss a concept I have coined: your “edge.” It is important to note that the concept as a whole is nothing new, but I haven’t seen these principles presented together as a basis to guide to all decisions at the poker table.

First, I must define the word “edge,” as it applies to playing winning poker. The simplest way to understand this term is to think of it as your advantage in a given hand over the other players you are playing against. For purposes of this article, I will only discuss your edge as it applies to making the decision of whether you should fold, call, or raise your hand preflop. This concept applies to every decision you will ever make at the poker table, but it would be very complicated to discuss in one article.

For example, your edge could be simply that you hold better cards than your opponents. It could also be that one of your opponents is on tilt and you are not. You could be in better table position than your opponent, or you could be against a player that understands next to nothing about the game. You also may have no edge whatsoever on your opponents in a given hand, in which case the obvious decision is that you should fold (this is an oversimplification as there are times you would play a hand in which you don’t have an overall edge, but where the future benefits you gain from your opponent being misled about the way you play makes the play worthwhile). On the surface, this concept is very easy to understand, but it should be noted that like almost all other concepts in poker, higher level thinking complicates things greatly.

I am now going to discuss some of the primary sources of your edge at the poker table and how you can weigh these factors into whether or not you should play your hand, and also how you should play it. I will list them in their order of importance and then discuss how to use them in conjunction with each other.

1) Your cards are better than what your expected opponents have.

The most important edge you can have over another player at the table is the fact that you hold better cards than he does. If you consistently hold better cards than your opponents and can play even close to as good as they do after the flop, you will win money in the long run. If you gave an average player pocket aces every time and Phil Ivey just about anything else (as long as they both didn’t know what the other held), I don’t think anyone would suggest Ivey could win.

2) You have better table position than your expected opponents have.

Position is king in no-limit hold’em. If you are on the button, you act after everyone else does. You have added information about the other player’s hands, which allows you to make better decisions about how to play your hand. These better decisions lead to profit in the long run. To illustrate this point, assuming only two players see the flop, I would rather have Ace King on the button than pocket nines on the cutoff. 99 is a slight statistical favorite to AK, but I would rather take the slight underdog with a positional advantage. Assuming pocket nines raises in late position, I will probably re-raise on the button. It is likely that he will flat call my re-raise in this situation. I will make a standard 2/3 – 3/4 “continuation” bet on the flop, and he will likely fold if any of the following cards come on the flop: A, K, Q, J, T. Let’s assume none of these cards are on the flop (even though most of the time one of them will appear), most players will just flat call my continuation bet on the flop because they are scared I may hold a bigger pair. In this case, I still have six true outs on the turn and can bluff a wide variety of other “scare” cards. This example oversimplifies things a little bit, but you can see that by combining a solid hand with good table position, you are still better off than a slightly better hand with bad table position.

3) Your table image will mislead players into making incorrect decisions against you.

When most people play poker, they can’t help but make observations about the players they are playing with. Unless they are paying no attention at all to the game, they will at least notice which players are raising a lot of hands and which players are never in a hand. If you are playing against players that don’t notice these things, this rule may not apply, but don’t worry, you should be doing just fine without it in a game like this.

There are a variety of ways your table image can mislead your opponents. The easiest way to use your table image to your advantage is to play solid poker (raise good hands, don’t bluff very often, etc.) for a long period of time and then suddenly change your style of play. Players will give you credit for your old table image, and you can usually bluff them a few times before they will adjust their perceptions about you. This works especially well if you are making a lot of good hands and winning big pots with them. Other players will see your solid hands and will simply stay out of your way, and then you can start to raise more marginal hands, because you probably won’t face much resistance from your opponents.

The opposite is also true. If you are playing many hands and your opponents catch you bluffing, you can take advantage of this as well. When you do pick up a very strong hand, play it even more aggressively than you normally would. You might make a raise that is larger than the size of the pot, or even move all your chips into the pot in some cases. The point is you are playing differently than you normally would to take advantage of the fact that players perceive you as a very loose player. In this case, you want them to think you are bluffing, so you play a hand as if you would want them to fold.

4) You are much better player (after the flop particularly) than your expected opponents.

This rule must have a disclaimer attached to it. I hear many players say things like “I played 56s because of the implied odds if I were to catch a big flop.” However, I also notice these same players going broke when the flop comes 226 and their opponent has an over pair. If you are going to play speculative hands against other opponents, be sure that you are an experienced enough player to know when you are likely beat, and to NEVER unnecessarily lose a big pot with these hands.

If you are playing against opponents who are considerably weaker than you, you can get away with consistently playing SLIGHTLY worse hands than they are. You might raise with some more speculative hands, in order to exploit the fact that they will never fold top pair (which you will beat from time to time, and you understand how to maximize your return when you do). If you have any doubts as to whether you are a better player than your competition, tighten up your starting hand requirements and play more strong hands.

5) You hold some other miscellaneous edge over your expected opponents.

Miscellaneous edges come from a variety of different factors. Your opponent might be tired from playing a very long session. He might be playing 8 tables at a time and be unable to possibly keep up with your changing table image. He might have lost a big pot (possibly even at another table that he doesn’t know you are watching) and start to go on tilt. There are a variety of ways that you can exploit these different situations, and it is up to you to decide just how important each one is. Typically the most significant source of edge in this category is if a player is on mega-tilt.

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Now that you know the order of importance of some of the most important sources of edge at the poker table, you must learn how to correctly exploit them. I will now briefly describe some of my recommendations:

-Edge #1 is far and away the most important edge to have. If you consistently have better cards than your opponents (and they are still seeing flops with you), you will make money.

-If you don’t have edge #1 in your favor, you should have AT LEAST two other sources of edge in your favor. For example, I wouldn’t mind seeing a flop against a player I knew probably had better cards than me, as long as I had edge #2 (table position) and edge #3 (favorable image) in my favor. If I also knew that I had edge #4 (I am a much better player after the flop) in my favor, I would love to be in this position against the other player repeatedly. Now, this is assuming your cards aren’t consistently terribly worse than your opponents. For example, even with every other edge in the world on my side, I wouldn’t want to take 27o up against AA.

-You must stay aware of how your different sources of edge change during each session. In particular you must keep an eye on what types of hands your opponents think you are playing. You can go from being pegged as a very tight player to being loose aggressive to being on tilt (in their eyes) in a matter of only a few hands.

-I’ve said this earlier, but I want to emphasize, do not overestimate edge #4. This edge should be considered in addition to, not in place of, the other edges that I have listed.

-There are many other miscellaneous edges that are exploitable in poker. I encourage all of you to look for them yourself and incorporate them into your game.

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This is the first time I have written about this concept, even though I have thought about it for a long time. I think there is room for advancement of this concept, with the possibility even of developing a mathematical formula which calculates when it is correct to play a hand. I would be interested in discussing this concept further if anyone is interested.

I hope this article will give poker players a better idea of the framework successful players use to decide when and how they should play their hands. Until next time, I wish everyone continued success at the tables!
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