Are you stuck in an endless cycle of playing the same postflop strategy, not knowing why it might be working or failing? If so, there is a chance that you’re not leveraging the three main concepts of postflop strategy, or even do not know about and straight to use marked cards as your last resort. These concepts will take your poker game to a whole new level – positional, range, and nut advantage.
Master these concepts and give yourself an edge over your opponents at the table. Today, we’re going to explore what all three key elements mean, how they impact decision-making pre-flop as well as postflop situations, and practical ways to apply each concept through real hand examples. So if you want to unlock secret strategies guaranteed for success in any post flop tournament or cash game – read on.
Positional Advantage
As the name implies, positional advantage is about your relative position in the hand compared to other players. Having a good read on where you are relative to others at the table will give you an instant edge when it comes to making decisions post-flop. It can be summarised simply as “play tight from early positions and loose from late ones,” but there is more to it than that. When playing from early positions, take into account the fact that you’re likely to face multiple players after you who will be holding stronger hands.
Conversely, when in late position, you can capitalize on weak players and bully them out of pots with a wider range of hands.
Range Advantage
Range advantage is basically having the better selection of hands in a specific situation. This concept can be applied pre-flop with your starting hand selection, as well as post-flop, when making decisions on how to proceed with a certain hand. The basic idea here is that you want to exploit any reads or information available to you so that you can narrow down your opponent’s range and be able to play against it in an optimal way.
Nut Advantage
Lastly, you need to understand the concept of nut advantage for a good reason. This is the ability to make decisions based on having a better hand than what your opponents are likely to have in any given situation. Nut advantage allows you to value bet more frequently and to bluff less, as well as being able to make profitable calls when your opponent is betting or raising.
But what if you don’t know what the other players have? Your nut advantage relies on having a good read on your opponents and the board. This means looking at all possible hands, they could have and using that to determine what the best play would be depending on their range of hands.
Bottom Line
The key to gaining an edge over your opponents is going one or even some steps ahead by understanding and mastering these three concepts. Your postflop play should include the right application of positional, range as well as nut advantages. We just scratched the surface in this article, so if you want to take your postflop game to the next level – stay tuned for our upcoming posts, where we’ll dive deeper into these concepts and how to apply them practically at the table.
