These attributes are: Table selection, Money management and Hand selection.

1. Table selection

Imagine a Ferrari in a street race, or a donkey in a horse race. It’s pretty sure before the off who’s going to succeed and who isn’t, right? Poker’s the same, and if you can consistently find cash games where one or more players is worse than you then over time you’re going to be a guaranteed winner.

Forget duelling with the greats at a WPT final table, because this is where the real money is made and, whatever your current level, if you practise good table selection you’ll have a consistent earn to progress from, whether it be into bigger cash games or taking shots at tournaments.

How is it done? Well, what you’re looking for is weaker players, so getting to know the pros or donkeys in a game or on a site is the obvious way – then just look for one and be wary of the other (although if they’re as smart as you they might be indicative of a good game).

If you’re new to a game or site though, then one useful tool of online play is the lobby, where statistics like average pot size or percentage of players seeing the flop can be an indicator. For example, if your game is limit hold’em, then the closer the average pot is to ten big bets (eg $100 in a $5/10 game), the juicier it’s likely to be.

2. Money management

Finding great games is all well and good, as long as you can afford the swings that are inevitable in them while your edge accrues. If you see a big game that you can’t afford and sit in it, you risk going broke altogether.

Another oft-neglected area is that of keeping records. Businessmen do it, bookies do it, so if you count yourself a serious player then you should too. This can be as simple as writing down how much you’ve won or lost on a given day so that you know where you are over time, or as complex as also including factors such as hours played, time of day, games and opponents, statistics garnered from the site, and what kind of mood you were in at the time. This way, over time you’ll have a little black book that can be used to figure out your optimal playing routine, as well as to tell you how much you’re making (or losing) at the game on an hourly rate.

3. Hand selection

So you’ve found a game that you can afford and promises to offer you a healthy profit. What can you do then to maximise your potential? Well, in most low-limit games the good news is that if you simply wait for better cards than your opponents then you will have a huge edge, as they often play any hand in any position without much thought going into it. Perhaps this is because they’re just recreational players, or maybe they’ve had a few drinks or gone on tilt. But whatever the reason, they’re offering you a headstart most of the time, so make sure you take advantage of it.

This is particularly true in limit hold’em games, where the mathematics of position and the fixed-betting structure make imagination and deception less important than in the pot-limit or no-limit varieties, and if you play on the internet it also fi ts perfectly with multi-tabling. Rather than playing in one game, getting bored and playing every hand, why not play in four at once and wait for those premium hands to come along?