A few minutes each, one visual each. New? Start with the basics. Played before? Jump to next steps, or open Going deeper under any lesson for the math. Using Blindspot explains the coach, the tracker and your stats. Tap any underlined word for a quick definition.
Two forced bets (the ), two private cards each, then up to four betting rounds while five shared cards come out. Step through one hand.
Heads-up, the button posts the small blind and acts first before the flop, last after it. Live games may add antes or a straddle; see Table rules.
Before any cards come out, two players post forced bets called the , so every hand has something to win. Vega posts the small blind ($1) and Blaze posts the big blind ($2). You have the dealer button, marked D.
Best five cards wins, from your two plus the five on the . Rarer hands rank higher; ties go to the higher .
There are 133,784,560 ways to deal seven cards. With seven, you finish with at least a pair 83% of the time, so one pair is often not enough at showdown in multiway pots.
Acting last lets you see what everyone does first, so the can play far more hands than .
Solver-based 6-max charts open roughly 15–18% of hands under the gun and 40–50% on the button. The Playbook is tighter on purpose: fewer, stronger hands are easier to play well.
The dealer seat. It acts last on every round after the flop, so it sees what everyone else does first. The best seat: play the most hands here.
are the cards that would save you. On the flop, outs × 4 ≈ your chance by the river; on the turn, outs × 2.
The Rule of 4 runs high above 8 outs: use outs × 4 − (outs − 8) instead (15 outs ≈ 53%, the exact figure is 54%). Discount outs that pair the board or complete a bigger flush for someone else.
You have four hearts. Any of the 9 hearts you can't see makes a flush.
Lime: your outs. Faded: cards you can already see. The other 47 cards could still come.
Call when your chance of winning beats the price: what you pay ÷ the pot after you call. That price is your .
Pot odds treat the hand as over after your call. add what you win later when you hit; reverse implied odds subtract what you lose when you hit a second-best hand. The defender's side of the same math is MDF: continue with pot ÷ (pot + bet) of your hands and bluffs can't profit automatically.
After you call, the pot is $40 and $10 of it came from you: $10 ÷ $40 = 25.0%. Win at least that often and the call pays off over time.
Lime bars: how often each draw hits on the river. White line: the equity you need.
One hand is mostly luck; thousands of hands are mostly skill. Even good players lose for weeks at a time, so judge your decisions, not your results, and don't let a put you on .
A 6-max No-Limit win rate has a standard deviation of about 80–100 BB per 100 hands. After N hands, 95% of results land within win rate ± 1.96 × SD × √(N/100): a +5 BB/100 player is still behind after 10,000 hands about 30% of the time. With real money, 20–30 buy-ins of keeps that swing survivable.
Units are big blinds (100 BB = one buy-in). Dashed line: what their skill earns on average. Even at +5 BB per 100 hands, some of them are losing after thousands of hands.
A wins only when they fold, so it has to work often enough to pay for itself. The best bluffs have a backup plan: a with a draw can still win when called.
A bet of b into pot p needs folds b ÷ (p + b) of the time (alpha). On the river, a balanced betting range has bluffs in the ratio b ÷ (p + 2b): about one bluff per two value bets with a pot-size bet. Choose bluffs that block your opponent's calling hands, like holding the ace of the flush suit.
Risk ÷ (risk + reward): $10 ÷ $30. Small bluffs need fewer folds, but they also make folding easier to resist. The lime figures must fold for the bluff to break even.
You can't see their cards, but you can see how they play. How often someone plays (VPIP) and raises (PFR) sorts them into a type, and each type has a simple counter. Bet size is the best : new players often bet big with big hands.
VPIP and PFR settle after about 50–100 hands; aggression and showdown stats (AF, WTSD) take several hundred. Think in , not single hands: each action removes hands they wouldn't play that way.
How to spot them: Calls a third of all hands and hardly ever raises.
How to beat them: Never bluff. Bet bigger with good hands, even just top pair: they'll pay you.
Tap a player. In a coached game, the tracker shows these numbers for everyone at your table. Give it about 30 hands before you trust them.
Each seat shows a player's chips, their seat this hand and how strong their cards are. Tap a label to see what it means, then find them all in a coached game.
Table equity uses everyone's real cards: exact after the flop, and 700 simulated run-outs before it, so preflop numbers can wobble by a point. The runs up to 20 for pocket aces. It's a quick strength number; the Playbook's opening ranges decide which hands to play from each seat.
5. Equity box. How often this hand wins if the rest of the board came out now. The leader's box turns lime, and the thin bar under the plate shows the same number. In a coached game it shows a dash until the hand is over, so it never gives away the bots' cards.
In a coached game, the coach gives one call with its reason, and it sees only your cards and the board. After the flop, call when Your equity beats Needed to call; when it says bet, any size in its range is fine.
Needed to call is your call ÷ the pot after you call: the from lesson 5. Its equity is against random hands, and a player who bets usually holds better than random, so treat close calls as folds. Before the flop it follows the Playbook: the opening range for your seat and, when someone raises, the range for your seat against theirs. On a phone, its call also sits in one line above your buttons; tap it for the full panel.
The coach sees your cards and the board, nothing else. Your opponents' cards are as hidden from it as they are from you.
You need 25% to call and have about 53%. Calling makes money over time.
The bar is your equity and the white line is what the call needs. Past the line, call; short of it, fold.
The tracker beside a coached game counts how everyone plays: how often they join a pot (), raise before the flop () and bet rather than call (). Pick a stat to see where normal players land.
VPIP and PFR settle after about 50–100 hands; AF takes a few hundred, and results take thousands. is net ÷ big blind ÷ hands × 100, so $38 up at $1/$2 over 60 hands is +32. Reading the table shows how to play against each type.
VPIP. Voluntarily put in pot: how often a player puts chips in before the flop by choice. Posting a blind doesn't count.
Normal-ish: About 18–30% for a solid player at a 6-handed table. Over 40% is too many hands.
After each hand, the review on Your hands marks any decision that differs from the coach and names the habit behind it. Progress tracks those habits over time, and drills give you quick practice spots for the one to fix.
A habit counts as a blindspot once it has had at least 6 chances and you went against the coach in a quarter of them or more. Bad calls and folds carry a rough cost in big blinds, from the coach's equity, so the costliest shows first. Progress splits your coached decisions into an earlier half and a recent half, and compares the two.
One decision to look at, mainly calling without the odds.
Facing $2, you called $2. The coach agrees.
Facing $12, you called $12 with 9♣ 8♦. The coach would fold.
You need 29% to call but have only about 20%. Fold.
When your chance of winning is below the price of the call, every call loses money over time.
Practice this spot →Your hands →Your last 30 hands wait on Your hands, each with a review like this. A ✗ means you did something different from the coach, and the tag names the blindspot it points to.