What is not edge?
"I work harder and more than others". That's great, but it is possible to work harder and harder but not be productive. You can calculate ranges and equities in pen on a piece of paper by multiplying and dividing by heart, or you can turn on PokerRanger or some other similar programme and do a 2 hour job in 5 minutes.
"I'm more in control of my emotions/bankroll/lifestyle" and so on. I do not deny the benefits of emotional stability, bankroll management and a healthier lifestyle, but it is very difficult to measure these objectively, let alone in comparison with others. "Isildur1 certainly didn't have the emotional stability, safe bankroll management, or sufficient hours of sleep, but for a long time he was considered to be the best player in cash games at the very highest limits.
Imagine two people of the same experience, physique and physical fitness, ready to fight to the death. What tool could you give to one of them to influence the outcome of the fight? More sleep before the fight? More will and desire to win? Perhaps. A knife would certainly tip the scales to one side, a pistol even more so. Edge is about the skills and tools you have that your opponent doesn't have, not a philosophy of life. Let's move on to specific examples so that this doesn't become just another philosophical reading about poker.
The low-limit edge - a strong theoretical basis
Example 1
Asking the question "How are you better than others?" I added "better than my own or lower limit players" in brackets for a reason. It is much easier to flesh out the examples with context. For example, you play in the 2NL and you are a mid-level player there. Everyone wins or loses all-in in a set over set situation or after 3 barrels on the river with a lower flush. Your game will be no different from anyone else's, so there is no edge here, and the result of the day will depend on how you did in these situations today.
However, you may have read the first poker book and learned that raising pre-flop is much more profitable than raising. This is your edge, a specific tool that you own and use and that the players around you do not have. You may also have found in the book some kind of table that tells you which hands can raise profitably and which cannot. As long as you play anything like as postflop as the players around you, these two tools are more than enough to be one of the best players in 2NL, and you will be a better player if you play two months with these tools than if you play 6 months without them.
Example 2
Another example, 10NL is the limit where people are sort of aware that there are ranges, but no more. Sticking with the same preflop example, more or less everyone knows that you have to open raise and that you can 3bet sometimes. What a 3bet range looks like, or even more so how much (let's not even go into the "why") you need to defend against 3bets, is not clear. It's based on intuition, which makes the hands you choose look good. When it comes to players at these limits, I do not start with complicated ranges, exceptions and variations of strategies that are balanced for the higher limits. Correct ranges, which are already on the printed tables this time, and understanding what, when and how much to 3bet or call against 3bets practically doubles the winrates available in this limit.
You want to always be able to identify specific situations that you play better than others at your limits and why, and as you go up in limits, it's important for you to find out what your opponents know and you don't. Be specific and clear. A 10NL player who doesn't manage preflop ranges, who plays "by feel", is doomed to failure among 25NL regs.
Higher Limit Edge - situations that are unfamiliar to regs
Another important idea for players who already have more weapons in their arsenal is to force your opponent to play in less familiar territory. The preflop edge is the easiest to understand, there are fewer variables, but we can and should be able to identify the postflop edge just as accurately.
One important skill is flop defence. This means that you have to be able to name (50NL) exactly which hands in your range you are defending against a c-bet. An example of this would be a sitout BBvBU in response to a preflop open, a flop of K86 with a flushdraw. We get a continuous bet of 50%, call with all flopped pairs, all draws (including gutshots), plus a few strong hands with backdoor flushdraws (e.g. AJs, ATs, A5s, QJs), which is more or less enough to defend a good portion of our range. All 100NL players will know pretty much exactly what to defend against 50% size, because they deal and study these situations. The 25NL regs will play more intuitively and are unlikely to defend with enough backdoors. If I know this and they don't, that is my edge.
Situation No 1
One of the situations I still use in my limits is a great example of how to force your opponent to play where the edge is on your side. In 100-200NL everyone studies single-raised pots and it is naive to expect big mistakes in them. In a BBvSB situation, a reg in these limits knows exactly what to 3bet and what to respond with against a SB open, and has postfloped against normal sizings thousands of times and is comfortable here. The situation changes dramatically when SB limps. So now you need to know who to isolate with, how to play against a limp/3bet, what BB's range looks like when he checks, and finally how to play postflop with that range. Unsurprisingly, the postflop game changes quite drastically, as the ranges for both positions become much wider, which means that you have to defend with significantly weaker hands, the bar for value-bets is also lowered considerably, and all in all, this is a very unfamiliar territory where the opponent is forced to guess. If I have studied this situation and my opponent has not, the edge grows like clockwork.
Situation 2
The last example I want to share happened at a live cash games table. I remember this situation very well, because the opponent's reaction then triggered a lot of thoughts about the Edge and its targeting. There was only one casual player at the table, the other 5 were of different levels but still regular players in that environment. I opened with 97s from CO position, got a call from BB. Flop K86r, c-bet 1/3 of the pot. Turn 3, which brought a flushdraw, BB check. I c-bet 1.5x pot. The BB player laughed out loud and very quickly threw his hand away, expressing his opinion that my line was inadequate, unconventional and probably only ever played with a very strong hand. The player was one of the better players on that table.
Before the new hand was even dealt, the player's face changed and he looked thoughtful, probably realising that these were not just random sizings, but a premeditated strategy that he was seeing for the first time. The next couple of times he received the same line from me, albeit folded, the reg took much longer to consider his decisions and "guess" what my range looked like. On the theory side, although the EV difference between normal sizings (say 2/3 each on the flop and turn) and 1/3 on the flop - 1.5x overbet on the turn is not big, one of these options was seen by the opponent for the first time, which means that until I know exactly what the ranges look like in this situation, the opponent is forced to guess - which creates a big Edge.
The benefits of Edge understanding for development
It is time to summarise and make sense of this article. There are endless tools that increase edge: Knowing the exact defending ranges against c-bets on different boards against different sizings, better bluff hand selection (most people bluff when they just decide "now"), balancing check-raise ranges, thin value bets (everyone will pay to bet for value when they have 90% against a calling range, it doesn't create Edge for anyone, but you can find situations where you will make thin value bets with a 54% equity and your opponents won't) and so on.
The key is to be able to identify them. Qualities such as self-criticism, work ethic, emotional coolness and so on are great qualities for a successful poker player, but you won't have a way to objectively weigh them up and compare them to, say, higher-limit players when you're thinking about getting there. Edge, this is not an abstraction, a general belief that on average I will make better decisions than my opponent. It's knowing exactly what mistakes they tend to make and how I can specifically take advantage of them. When you start to look for those niches, you will have a whole new perception of poker and the potential to improve quickly and efficiently. More poker strategy click here.
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