Poker is a card game played by two or more players with chips in a central pot. A player’s goal is to make the best five card hand possible, using their own two cards plus the community cards dealt on the table (the first three cards are called the “flop,” the next two cards are called the “turn” and the final card is the “river”). During betting intervals in between each deal, the players can either raise or call bets made by other players. The highest hand wins the pot.

Professional poker players are experts at extracting signal from noise, across a variety of channels, to both exploit their opponents and protect themselves. In a live game, they use in-person cues like eye contact and body language to inform their decisions. However, in a online poker game, these factors are removed, so the players must rely on other information sources to gain an advantage over their opponents. This includes building behavioral dossiers on their opponents, as well as buying or collecting records of other players’ “hand histories.”

The most successful poker players are able to cultivate and protect their sources of relative advantage while maintaining decision quality under pressure. These meta-skills are referred to as the “poker formula,” and they comprise the foundation of professional poker strategy. In this article, we’ll explore the different aspects of the poker formula and how you can apply them to your own poker play.