Reading the board

The moment the flop lands, look at the board before your own hand.

High cards, matching suits, connectedness — those decide which side is ahead.

A board with an ace on it belongs to whoever holds more aces.

• board texture

  The shape of the community cards: high or low, connected or not, one suit or three. It decides who the board favours.

• range advantage

  Whose set of possible hands does better on this board, averaged across all of them.

• nut advantage

  Who can hold the very strongest hands here. You need this before betting big; without it, only better hands keep calling.

20 hands or more, with an optimal rate of 55% and average EV loss no worse than 0.25BB