Level one
The rules that decide whether money comes in or goes out. Five lessons, and everything else in poker is built on them.
When somebody bets and you are deciding whether to call, you are being offered a price. You pay a fixed amount to win whatever is already in the middle plus their bet. The only question that matters is how often you need to win for that to be worth doing.
You need 25% to call £5 into £15, and you have 31.2%. That clears the bar, so the call is worth money even though the hand has not made anything yet. Nothing here is about whether ace-queen is a good hand. It is about whether 31.2% beats the price of 25%.
Calling £5 into £15. The green slice is yours to pay, the rest is what you take if you win. You need to be right for 5 of every 20, which is the 25% the table quotes you.
The sum is short. If the pot is 10 and they bet 5, you pay 5 to win 15. You need to win 5 out of every 20, which is 25%. That number is called your break-even equity, and it is the bar your hand has to clear.
Notice what happens as the bet grows. A small bet asks you to be right rarely, so you can call with a weak hand. A big bet asks you to be right often, so most hands have to go. This is why bet sizing matters, and it is the whole of lesson six.
Equity is the share of the pot your hand is worth right now: how often it wins if the hand is played out to the end. Ace-king against a pair of queens before the flop is a famous example. It wins about 43% of the time. That is not "losing", it is a coin flip you are slightly behind in, and if the price is right you should take it every time.
Equity is why results tell you almost nothing in the short run. Get your money in with 70% and you lose three times in ten. Ten hands is nothing. A hundred is nothing. You cannot tell a good player from a lucky one by looking at a session, and neither can they.
Acting last on every betting round after the flop is the single biggest structural edge in the game. You see what everybody else does before you commit. You can fold when they show strength, and charge them when they show weakness. Nothing about your cards has changed, but the information has.
Jack-ten suited on the button, with one player left to act, is a clear open. The same two cards under the gun at a full table, with five players still to come, is a fold. The cards did not change: the number of people who can still wake up with a better hand did.
The six seats as the table deals them. Before the flop the action runs from under the gun round to the button; after it, the button always speaks last.
The practical consequence: play more hands from late position than early, and be quicker to fold marginal hands when there are still players to act behind you. A hand that is a clear open on the button is a clear fold from first position at a full table.
This is also why the blinds lose money. They pay to be dealt in and then act first for the rest of the hand. Losing less from the blinds than everyone else is a real skill.
Most losing players play too many hands. The fix is not to play only aces, it is to know roughly what fraction of hands is defensible from where you are sitting, and to let the rest go without a second thought.
The chart the drills page checks you against. Green is a hand worth opening from late position, and that is about one hand in five. Pairs run down the diagonal, suited hands sit above it, offsuit below.
What actually drives an opening range is how many players are still to act behind you. Each one is another chance that somebody wakes up with a real hand.
| Players still to act | Roughly what to open |
|---|---|
| 5 or more | 15% |
| 4 | 19% |
| 3 | 25% |
| 2 | 33% |
| 1 | 45% |
| 0, heads up | 75% |
The exact numbers are less important than the shape. Tight early, loose late, and much looser than you expect when it is folded to you close to the button.
Calling too much. Curiosity, a hand you have grown attached to, or the feeling that money already in the pot is still yours. It is not. Chips you have put in are gone, and the only question is whether this call, at this price, makes money.
Folding too much. Rarer, and it looks like discipline, but folding every time somebody bets means anybody can take a pot from you whenever they like. If you never call, you are not being solid, you are being robbed politely.
Almost every losing player leans one way or the other, consistently, without knowing which. Finding out which one you are is worth more than any amount of theory.
When you have not made a hand yet but might, the question is how many cards finish it. Those cards are your outs, and counting them turns a feeling into a number you can price.
Count the cards that make your hand, then multiply. With two cards still to come multiply by four; with one, by two. It is close enough to the real number to decide with, and you can do it at the table.
Two things people get wrong. They count outs that do not really help: a card that gives you a pair but gives somebody else a flush is not an out. And they count the same card twice when a draw overlaps, which inflates a hand that was already good enough.
Every hand runs through the same four rounds, and knowing where you are in them tells you how much is still to come.
Before the flop everyone has two cards and nothing else. The flop puts three shared cards down and is where most hands are decided, because it is the round where a hand either connects or does not. The turn is the expensive street: pots are large and the mistakes cost the most. The river has no cards left to come, so every hand is finished and there is nothing left to draw to.