Three golden rules of profitable play
Let's find out what you should be thinking about during every poker hand.
Everyone's a genius in hindsight. I hope after reading this article the best thoughts will always be the first ones to come to your mind. Those thoughts form the three rules of profitable play, and following them is absolutely necessary.
Pre-flop
Two cards are dealt to you. FOLD should be your first thought. Only when you have justified ideas on how to exceed EV(fold) should you start pondering any alternative moves. If in every hand your thought process begins with fold, you'll save lots of time, effort and nerves.
If you fold every hand, you lose 16.7 bb/100 at full-ring (FR), and 25 bb/100 at short-handed (SH) tables. That's your starting point. If you have a substantial database with a worse win-rate, then poker is probably not for you.
Actually, starting win-rates of 99.9% of players are higher because the top 3-5% of hands are always played, thus giving us a nice bump. So let's assume -10 bb/100 at FR, and -15 bb/100 at SH. Even after reading/watching tonness of content, many players still manage to have similar win-rates.
By the way, here's an answer to the question: "Where to start – FR or SH tables?" Do you want to start from -15 bb/100 or perhaps from -10 bb/100?
Greatness from small beginnings
Build your mastery step by step: from simple and obvious matters towards complex ones.
So you have an initial winrate of -10 bb/100 at FR. From now on, every hand you didn't fold pre-flop should improve your winrate. How and what hands exactly, you ask? Well, this is the question you're supposed to be answering yourself throughout your poker career.
My advice: Start from something simple and obvious, and don't rush it. To play better in difficult situations and improve your achieved EV, bring a new element into your strategy every other day.
For example, you've learned the Auto-Profit concept. Now you know that if both the SB and BB fold more frequently than in 57% of cases, you can profitably steal from the BU with any two cards. True story, especially with many nitty players grinding the micros.
Today you focus only on such BU steals and get used to corresponding stats/probabilities. Tomorrow you repeat it, then add something else. In a year, your strategy would boast 150 titanium-solid tactics for crushing your opponents (well, you still have to relax 65 days a year). Imagine how strong a player you could become!
Post-flop
If you find yourself post-flop after all this, there are two options: either you have initiative or you don't. Please note that the following is valid for heads-up play only.
If you performed the last aggressive action on the previous street, i.e. you have the initiative, first you should be thinking about betting. You should usually c-bet the flop, then barrel again on the turn and river.
If you called before, you should think about calling later bets from your opponent. It means calling c-bet and later barrels.
If you think about it, you'll find out that these principles originate from poker math. If on any post-flop street you fold in more than 50% of cases, your opponent can print money at your expense with any two cards. The same principle applies with c-betting with initiative in less than 50% of cases.
Of course every situation is unique, and sometimes you have to call/bet less or more frequently. But altogether your total call/bet frequency should exceed 50%.
By the way, you'll be considering the same frequencies when building your game plan for every hand. You'll be looking for spots where opponents call/bet too frequently or not enough, and to use these mistakes against them.
Congratulations! After reading this article you've become stronger than 99% of your opponents, at least in terms of understanding the nature of the game. And as for corresponding ranges ‒ you'll be building them throughout your whole poker career.
