10 Most Important Concepts for Poker Players

Hello wizards. Today, I'm going to present the 10 most important concepts for new poker players. In this video, I've outlined 10 of the most important concepts for newer poker players. This video is designed to help you overcome common leaks, improve the way you study, and change your mindset for the better so that you can achieve long-term success as a poker player. Let's dive right in. Let me start with the most controversial suggestion I could think of: learn the mechanics of game theory. Start by learning the absolute fundamentals. See, the problem with poker is that the feedback loop is very broken. You'll often be rewarded for terrible plays and punished for great plays, and that's because the edges are quite small and there's a lot of variance involved. So trying to learn through direct experience will only take you so far and is more often than not just a recipe for setting money on fire. So if you want to progress as a poker player, you need to start to understand these concepts and game theories such as indifference, exploitability, expected value, pot odds, minimum defense frequencies, and so on. That you do not need to be calculating all of these concepts at the table, but you do need a sense for how these actually work. For example, if your opponent bets bigger, you don't need to defend his Y, or if the stack to pot ratio is small, that means if there's not a lot of money behind relative to the pot, you need to be prepared to stack off wider. Indifference just means a hand is close to the line. It is very close to one decision or the other, and it's important to separate points of indifference from, for example, a clear snap fold or clear snap call. It's called learning thresholds, and so rather than trying to calculate all of this stuff, what you're trying to do is learn what these concepts mean and how to apply them to your game in a broad, abstract sense. One of the fastest ways to become a reasonably solid poker player is by studying thresholds. A threshold is a line of indifference. That is to say, what is, for example, the strongest hand I fold or the weakest hand I continue? That be your continuation threshold, or you can ask maybe if you're making a bet, what is the weakest hand I can bet for a value? That is to say, when I bet this hand and get called, I'm still ahead. That's a value bet. Understanding where these thresholds are on different boards, different textures, against different, you know, positions in different spots is fundamental to becoming a good poker player. Beginners always massively mis-evaluate these thresholds, commonly by overvaluing what amount to medium strength hands that feel to them like big hands. So the next time you review a GTO solution, go out of your way to ask these simple questions and find the very basics of your continuation threshold or your value raise threshold or your value bet threshold. This is the quickest, easiest way to become a solid player without having to memorize everything. Okay, here's an example of how you can use GTO Wizard to find thresholds. Let's say you're playing the big blind facing the button on queen jack six. This is a single raised pot using a 50NL rake structure. Let's say the button bets 75 percent. We can see that there's a whole lot going on, and trying to memorize everything is really hard, so don't do that. Firstly, I recommend you change your view from vertical to horizontal. That's because this is a flush draw board, and it's going to be easier to identify flush draws in your range. Secondly, utilize this filters tab. Now I want you to ask yourself a question: what is the strongest hand we fold? Answer that question for made hands and draws. Well, facing a 75 pot size bet, the strongest hand you fold is about jack eight, jack nine without a backdoor flush draw. Similarly, about six X with no backdoor flush draw, and hands nines like sevens and twos through fives are all folding. These hands have fewer outs than your six X despite, you know, eight eight technically looking stronger than a six. Similarly, you can ask about your draws. Well, you're never going to be folding an open-ender or a flush draw or a combo draw, but you might fold a gut shot, right? Know where that continuation line is. That's what's important. That's going to sculpt your strategy, and remember it changes depending on the size of their bet. If they bet 33, you're going to be continuing much wider. Right now, you're going to be mostly calling your sevens through nines, but you start folding your twos through fives without a heart. Find where that cutoff point is. Find your continuation line. You know, now you're calling all of your gut shots except for the very worst ones. Similarly, you can try and find value thresholds. For example, let's say you're playing the button here and you want to know how you should proceed on the turn on this brick turn. Well, we see a whole bunch of different sizes here. You're a little confused. Use this drop-down, group them together, and now we see it mainly just overbets or checks. How's the overbet constructed? Hover over this icon, and you can see it's mostly going to be top pair plus for value and mixing in, you know, some draws, some ace-high flush draws, combo draws. And in fact, you can press this button that isolates the betting range, and you can use the filters here. Well, we know that about top pair plus is what's going to be value betting, right? You can't be doing this with second pair. You can't overbet with a jack because you're just overplaying your hand. You know that most draws can be put in here at some frequency, and reasonable hands like second pair or weak queen X are not strong enough to overbet. These hands should check back and play a medium strength range. So find your value thresholds, find your continuation threshold, figure out what hand class is appropriate for what action. Use the filters, use the grouping, and try and find the overall shape of the range rather than trying to meticulously memorize each and every frequency. This leads me to point number three: it's not about your hand, it's about your range. Look, I see this all the time. People will come up and they'll be obsessed with some obscure triple barrel bluff with ten nine off that they have at 0.001 percent in their range. That's not important. What actually matters is your overall strategy. When you triple barrel, are you using appropriate value hand classes for how much money you're putting in? Are you roughly using the right amount of value and bluffs overall relative to the bet sizes? For example, if you open eight six suited here, the actual frequency that you open this hand is irrelevant. What actually matters is how much you're opening overall. If you open too wide, people can exploit you by three-betting more. If you open too tight, people can overfold, and then your aces don't get paid enough. It's about the overall range construction rather than the minutia of each combination within your range. Tip number four: winning the pot more often does not equate to maximizing value. Okay, this is really common. The human mind tends to remember losses more strongly than wins, and this creates a very natural cognitive bias, tempting people to try and win the pot immediately instead of making the highest EV play. That's going to cause you to overplay medium hands because you're afraid of getting outdrawn. It's going to cause you to overfold in spots where you have big implied odds, spots where you know you're going to lose more often than not, but you're missing out on that opportunity to win a massive pot. Let me give you an example. Let's say we roll this dice one through six. If it rolls one through five, you give me ten dollars. Pretty bad bet, right? Five out of six times you're going to lose. However, let's say when we roll a six, I give you a hundred dollars. Now all of a sudden, you're going to be losing often, sure, but your overall expected value is eight dollars and 33 cents per roll. That's awesome. That's a huge chunk of value in your favor despite the fact that you're losing so often. You're going to win a huge pot once in a while because you're maximizing

way you study and change your mindset for the better so that you can achieve long-term success as a poker player let's dive right in let me start with the most controversial suggestion i could think of learn the mechanics of

game theory start by learning the absolute fundamentals see the problem with poker is that the feedback loop is very broken you'll often be rewarded for terrible plays and punished for great plays and that's because the edges are quite small and there's a lot of

variance involved so trying to learn through direct experience will only take you so far and is more often than not just a recipe for setting money on fire so if you want to progress as a poker player you need to start to understand

these concepts and game theories such as indifference exploitability expected value pod odds minimum defense frequencies and so on that you do not need to be calculating all of these concepts at the table but you do need a sense for how these actually work for

example if your opponent bets bigger you don't need to defend his y or if the stack to pot ratio is small that means if there's not a lot of money behind relative to the pot you need to be

prepared to stack off wider indifference just means a hand is close to the line it is very close to one decision or the other and it's important to separate points of indifference from for example a clear snap fold or clear snap call

it's called learning thresholds and so rather than trying to calculate all of this stuff what you're trying to do is learn what these concepts mean and how to apply them to your game in a broad abstract sense one of the fastest ways

to become a reasonably solid poker player is by studying thresholds a threshold is a line of indifference that is to say what is for example the strongest hand i fold or the weakest hand i continue that be your

continuation threshold or you can ask maybe if you're making a bet what is the weakest hand i can bet for a value that is to say when i bet this hand and get called i'm still ahead that's a value

bet understanding where these thresholds are on different boards different textures against different you know positions in different spots is fundamental to becoming a good poker player beginners always massively mis-evaluate these thresholds commonly by overvaluing what amount to medium

strength hands that feel to them like big hands so the next time you review a gto solution go out of your way to ask these simple questions and find the very basics of your continuation threshold or your value raise threshold or your value

bet threshold this is the quickest easiest way to become a solid player without having to memorize everything okay here's an example of how you can use gto wizard to find thresholds let's say you're playing the big blind facing

the button on queen jack 6. this is a single raised pot using a 50nl rake structure let's say the button bets 75 percent we can see that there's a whole lot going on and trying to memorize everything is

really hard so don't do that firstly i recommend you change your view from vertical to horizontal that's because this is a flush draw board and it's going to be easier to identify flush draws in your range secondly utilize this filters tab now i want you

to ask yourself a question what is the strongest hand we fold answer that question for mate hands and draws well facing a 75 pot size bet the strongest hand you fold is about jack 8 jack 9 without a backdoor flesh draw

similarly about 6x with no backdoor flush draw and hands nines like sevens and twos through fives are all folding these hands have fewer outs than your 6x despite you know eight eight technically looking stronger than a six similarly you can ask about your draws

well you're never going to be folding an open ender or a flush draw or a combo draw but she might fold a gut shot right know where that continuation line is that's what's important that's going to sculpt your strategy and remember it

changes depending on the size of their bet if they bet 33 you're going to be continuing much wider right now you're going to be mostly calling your sevens through nines but you start folding your twos through fives without

a heart find where that cutoff point is find your continuation line you know now you're calling all of your gut shots except for the very worst ones similarly you can try and find value thresholds for example let's say

you're playing the button here and you want to know how you should proceed on the turn on this brick turn well we see a whole bunch of different sizes here you're a little confused use this drop down group them together and now we see

it mainly just over bets or checks how's the over bet constructed hover over this icon and you can see it's mostly going to be top pair plus for value and mixing in you know some draws some ace high flush

draws combo draws and in fact you can press this button that isolates the betting range and you can use the filters here well we know that about top pair plus is what's gonna be value betting right you can't be doing this

with second pair you can't over bet with a jack because you're just overplaying your hand you know that most draws can be put in here at some frequency and reasonable hands like second pair or weak queen x are not strong enough to

over bet these hands should check back and play a medium strength range so find your value thresholds find your continuation threshold figure out what hand class is appropriate for what action use the filters use the grouping and try and find the overall shape of

the range rather than trying to meticulously memorize each and every frequency this leads me to point number three it's not about your hand it's about your range look i see this all the time people will come up and they'll be

obsessed with some obscure triple barrel bluff with ten nine off that they have at 0.001 percent in their range that's not important what actually matters is your overall strategy when you triple barrel are you using appropriate value hand

classes for how much money you're putting in are you roughly using the right amount of value and bluffs overall relative to the bet sizes for example if you open eight six suited here the actual frequency that you open this hand

is irrelevant what actually matters is how much you're opening overall if you open too wide people can exploit you by three betting more if you open too tight people can overfold and then your aces don't get paid enough it's about the

overall range construction rather than the minutia of each combination within your ranch tip number four winning the pot more often does not equate to maximizing value okay this is really common the human mind tends to remember losses more

strongly than wins and this creates a very natural cognitive bias tempting people to try and win the pot immediately instead of making the highest tv play that's going to cause you to overplay medium hands because you're afraid of getting outdrawn it's

going to cause you to overfold in spot where you have big implied odds spots where you know you're going to lose more often than not but you're missing out on that opportunity to win a massive pot let me give you an example let's say we

roll this dice one through six if it rolls one through five you give me ten dollars pretty bad bet right five out of six times you're going to lose however let's say when we roll a six i give you

a hundred dollars now all of a sudden you're going to be losing often sure but your overall expected value is eight dollars and 33 cents per roll that's awesome that's a huge chunk of value in your favor despite the fact that you're

losing so often you're going to win a huge pot once in a while because you're maximizing value instead of looking at how often you're going to win and the same concept applies all the time in poker let's look at an example so back

to this queen jack 6 example let's say you've bet small in a turn big blind calls and it's action is on you on the turn now i think a lot of novices will see all the draws on this board you know

there's going to be 5 4 there's going to be ace 10 and king 10 and 10 9 and a million different heart draws that's scary so what do most of them do well they start barreling a bunch of their

second and third pair they start putting a bunch of medium hands into their betting range because they're terrified of getting outdrawn but the truth is you're not going to be folding out most of the hands that you want to fold

anyway with a bet and if you bet large enough that you do start to fold out flush draws and straight draws well you've now completely overplayed your hand to the point where you won't be ahead by the river so it's a null

strategy instead you need to accept the fact that your second pair is just going to get out drawn sometimes and that is the way it is similarly let's say you decide to over bet on the button action's on you in the big blind you

have a hand like for example 5 4 suited here now 5 4 is way behind all of their value and in fact i'm going to switch this drop down to all we can see that the equity of this hand

is 29 that means we're going to be losing this hand you know more than two-thirds of the time however the expected value is positive because when we do hit our draw we're going to stack villain for a bunch of money you know we

hit a flush draw we're going to stack all of their straight draws their two pairs and their sets those implied odds make this a valuable call same story with a7 here you know this hand is behind however because of all

the extra implied odds we win on the river from big hands when we hit this is going to be a plus cv call you shouldn't be folding this hand despite the fact that you only have ace high so instead

of thinking about how often you're going to win the pot think about how much money you can win maximize your value rather than how often you win the pot tip number five stop overvaluing big cards most recreational players

massively overvalue big cards any ace anything with broadway cards is you know just so strong if they for example face a three bet and a four bet they're not letting go of ace jack it's ace jack why would you let go of this hand or for

example if you have queens and you bet flop turn and river and then you face a river check raise on a flesh completing straight completing boat completing run out you need to let that hand go you've just got an over pair right a great hand

preflop doesn't translate to a great hand pose flop i think a lot of this comes down to some form of entitlement tilt you know you deserve to win the pot because you had a good hand pre-flop but that's just not how it works and in fact

that kind of behavior is going to kill the value of your premium hands because you're going to run into so many reverse implied odds especially playing cash games 100 big lines deep that the eevee you gain by betting them off the hand is

completely dwarfed by the massive pots you lose when you can't fold these post flop so don't overplay big cards this leads me to my next point most of your ev comes from nutted hands assuming you're not overplaying the post flop for

example here we can see that most hands are extremely close to break even zero 0.1 0.2 realistically very few hands in your range make up the vast majority of your expected value that's why it is so important to learn how to play your

nutted hands correctly and to optimize your strategy such that your nutted hands actually get paid off right if you're a complete knit you probably aren't going to extract a whole lot of value when you do make strong hand

because well frankly people are going to recognize that you're a net similarly if you overplay all of your weak hands sure you might get paid off when you have value but it doesn't matter because you've already lost 50 parts spewing it

off with queen 2 suited i want to show you a graphic by a good friend of mine named kevin this is something he posted on twoplustwo a couple years ago and this shows the expected value of every hand in a button opening range

as we can see hands like aces queens kings ace kings jacks these premium hands make up the vast majority of your expected value for reference the size of the square is equal to your ev the rest of these hands

are icing on the cake they're flavoring they're designed to get the bigger hands paid off for the most part now when it comes post-flop this is no longer going to be the case you know different hands will become nutted hands but overall

what actually matters is how you play these high ev nutted hands because that is where most of your eevee comes from realistically most of your value in poker comes from just coolering people just you know having the better hand and

making them pay with a worse hand and conversely avoiding spots where you have the worst hand like ace jack off facing the better hand so learning to play your nutted hands well is absolutely fundamental to improving your win rate

as a poker player tip number seven start by mastering your pre-flop strategy mastering pre-flop is the quickest and most efficient way to drastically improve your results that's because every decision starts with pre-flop if you make this part of your

strategy automatic not only do you set yourself up to play post flop well but it's one less thing to think about when you're actually playing poker at the table so make this part of your game automatic the best way to do that is to

check out gta wizard's new practice mode which lets you practice from pre-flop all the way till river by practicing this by making this strategy just something that's automatic to your play you're gonna set yourself up play well on every street going forward

tip number eight and this one's a bit controversial most of your heuristics are based on lies you see almost every heuristic rule of thumb generality you come up with is inevitably going to be based on faulty assumptions and that's

because if you play through experience your perception of a winning play will be skewed by the meta in which you play it's going to be skewed by factors such as risk aversion and bias and wanting to win the pot more often to truly grow as

a poker player you need to let go of old habits and broaden your horizons and this is especially true when you're first starting to work with solvers you see solvers are confusing and the vast majority of people have some world view

in mind some overall strategic hierarchy that they believe this is the way poker ought to be played and then they just confirmation bias their own results they'll just look at the strategy and they'll only look for things that

confirm their old world view rather than trying to decipher why their world view might be wrong in some spot i mean this is true outside poker 2 but more so in poker you need to accept the fact that

most of your heuristics your generalities are based on lies and faulty assumptions because you cannot learn you cannot grow as a poker player until you accept that the more you know the more you know you don't know tip number nine variance is much much

bigger than the human mind can conceptualize the gambler's fallacy is very common among poker players let me give you an example let's say we flip a fair coin and it lands on head six times in a row what's the probability that it

lands on heads on the seventh flip well if you're a suspicious gambler or you know just like most recreational poker players you might think to yourself wow you know six heads we're pretty much owed to tales right but no that's not

how it works the next flip is still 50 50. you're just as likely to flip a seventh head as you were to flip heads the first time and that must be the case because the coin is 50 50. so what's

going on here well you need to understand the law of large numbers after thousands of flips we expect heads and tails to even out but that's not some universal godly karma it's just the law of large numbers imagine we continue

to flip a thousand times and heads retains that six point lead at that point we will have flipped heads and 497 tails this is actually the expected value when starting with a six point lead for heads at that point we

flip 50.3 heads and 49.7 tails that's much closer to 50 50 than we started with despite the fact that tails never caught up and if you keep increasing the sample size and you keep retaining that same lead well you're gonna come up with

the same numbers it's gonna get closer and closer to 50 despite tails never catching up and that's just how it works out similarly we see the same thing in poker just because you know you've had some run bad doesn't mean the deck owes

you anything right just because villains sucked out on you three times in a row doesn't mean they're less likely to suck out on you the next time the deck doesn't have memory so you need to understand that poker has a lot of

variance and in fact there's a tool i recommend you play with to get your mind around this concept this is a poker variance calculator this one's by prime dope but others exist so let's imagine you're a solid cash game

winner you win five big blinds per 100 very solid very respectable and standard deviation is 100 this is completely typical this is to say how swingy your results are you don't need to understand this exact number but just know this is

very normal for a six max cash game let's say you play i don't know a thousand hands what are the chances that you come out ahead that you win money after a thousand hands well if we calculate we

can see the probability of a loss after a thousand hands is about 43 so you know pretty high chance that you lose money okay what about 10 000 hands surely it has to start converging after ten thousand well

there's still a thirty percent chance that you lose money after ten thousand hats okay what about a hundred thousand hands that's a huge sample right that's more than some people play in a year well there's still a five percent chance that

despite being a very solid winner and putting in a ton of volume that you still lose 5.69 that's huge that's like more than one in 20. so you need to realize that variance is way bigger than the human mind can conceptualize we

cannot in our minds wrap our heads around a hundred thousand hands let alone conceive that a winning player would be losing after that many hands yet statistically this is going to happen once every 20 runs or something right this is completely possible and

the inverse is also true you can run like an absolute god right you can for example at probably the best of this interval you're gonna be winning a ton of money despite the fact that you might not be

playing that one people often ask you know is poker skill or is it gambling and the truth is it's both you need to accept that this is a gambling game and it is a skill game you can have an edge

the same as you could have an edge trading stocks in the stock market but you're still gambling and you're still taking on risk and you can still lose despite playing a good strategy wrapping your head around this variance

is fundamental to long-term success in poker because like it or not every bad poker player is going to have an absolute horrific downswing if they play long enough that is just guaranteed the reverse is also true they're going gonna

run like a god at some point you really need to look at both and you need to understand that this game has a ton of swings tip number ten final tip of the video stop over playing medium strength hands

guys this is really common you need to develop a medium strength showdown value pot control check back kind of range most weak aggressive players have two strategies they've got the give up range and everything else gets the gas pedal

this type of player never wins a showdown with those marginal hands because they either bet so aggressively that they fold out their opponent or they get to showdown against the narrow range that has them crushed this is not

a good way to organize your equity a better way is to construct value and bluffs that way you're polarizing using strong hands and weak hands and the opponent is guessing with every hand in between meanwhile your medium hands

which are going to check more and realize their equity get the showdown against the range they can actually beat if you want to learn more about this system you can look up for example the post-flop game plan or the four

categories of poker i'm not gonna go into it in this video because there's a ton of content about this already on the internet but essentially you want more than give up and gas pedal you also want medium that just wants to realize equity

and go to showdown all right that's it for the video guys i hope you enjoyed it if you like this kind of content please let me know like subscribe hit the bell and of course if you want to discuss

this more please join our discord link is in the description we'll be happy to answer all of your theoretical questions there thanks for watching