The Basics: Playability

The playability of a hand indicates how easy it will be for you to make the best possible decision after the flop.

You always want to invest your money as a favourite with a very high chance of winning. This means that it is necessary for you to know how strong your hand really is. The better the playability of your hand is, the easier it will be to know when you can shove in your chips as a favourite.

Good playability leads to domination

One of the most frequent questions in poker is: "Where do I stand with my hand?". How do you know that you are the favourite in a hand?

In many situations, the answer to that question is not very clear cut. Let's say you are holding and the flop comes . You want to get that hand to showdown over the three remaining streets. How sure are you that you will win the pot at the showdown?

If your opponent also holds top pair, chances are high that he will have a better kicker. In that case you are dominated. Domination means that a strong hand is up against a reasonable but worse hand that has very little chances of catching up.

If you are playing with against on a flop, you are dominated. You are behind and you hardly have any chance of catching up. The only card that will help you is a 4.

If you are holding against on a board, you are not dominated. You are definitely behind, but you have good chances of making a better hand than your opponent. If heart rolls of on the turn, you will be the one to dominate your opponent. He will have a good hand with top pair top kicker, but he is very behind compared to your flush.

The playability decides who dominates whom. Domination decides who will be the favourite and consequently win the money. The more often you can dominate your opponent, the more money you will win.

Domination means: a strong hand plays against a reasonable but weaker hand that has little chances of catching up. The one who dominates will win the money!

Playability influences hand selection

The playability of a hand will only become important after the flop. However, post-flop situations depend on your pre-flop hand selection.

Your goal for post-flop play is the following: try to dominate and avoid being dominated!

You can achieve this by preferring hands with good playability in your pre-flop hand selection. But how is the playability of a hand determined?

It is evident that you should always strive to play big pots with strong hands. A strong hand is only really strong if your opponents can hold weaker hands that will still be strong enough to make them pay. This will be true on a regular basis for the following hands: sets, straights, flushes and top pair top kicker when you are holding AK. The more likely your holding is to hit one of those hands, the better its playability.

The following principles are key for hand selection with good playability:

• Aces with a strong kicker are better than aces with a weak kicker.
• Suited cards are better than offsuit: they can make flushes.
• Connected cards are better than unconnected: they can make straights.
• Pairs have a good playability post-flop: they can hit sets.

Look at the following examples:

Examples for playability
Good playability
, ,	You dominate with strong top pairs, flushes, straights and sets.
Mediocre playability
, ,	You hit and dominate less often.
Bad playability
, ,	You will be dominated often.

Good playability simplifies post-flop play

Let's return to the question: "Where do I stand with my hand?". The better the playability of your hand is, the easier it will be to answer that question. You will have an easy decision if one of these answers is correct:

• You are clearly ahead: you try to get money into the pot.
• You are clearly behind: you play check/fold.
• You have a strong draw: you want to continue, be it aggressively or passively.

If you can give a clear answer, you are very likely facing a difficult decision. You are more likely to make mistakes the more difficult your decision is. The following table shows some examples:

Your hand	The board	Where do you stand?	What do you do?
		Clearly ahead	Bet/raise
		Clearly behind	Check/fold
		Clearly ahead	Bet/raise
		Strong draw	Bet/raise or call
		Monster draw	Bet/raise
		Clearly behind	Check/fold
		?	?

Good playability means that you will have more easy decisions. Thus, you will make less mistakes and play more profitably.

Consider, however, that you will also face difficult decisions with hands that have a good playability. However, this will happen much less frequently when compared to hands with bad playability.

Summary

The playability of a hand determines how often you will be able to easily play optimally after the flop and how often you will face difficult decisions.

The goal is to get paid off by worse hands that will have a hard time catching up to you. This is called domination.

You achieve domination by choosing to play hands with a good playability before the flop. Suited connectors, pairs and AK have the best playability. Offsuit hands with large gaps have the worst playability.