In chapter 14 of The Course, Ed Miller explains Skill #10—Taking On the Pros—focusing on how to compete profitably against professional players in live 5-10 games once you’ve mastered the earlier skills.
Why You Can’t Avoid Pros Forever
Miller begins by acknowledging that any regularly spread 5-10 game will attract professional players. While many players hope to dodge pros and focus only on recreational opponents, the best professionals don’t think this way—they aim to beat everyone at the table. If you want to maximize long-term success and potentially move higher, you must be prepared to play well against other pros.
Two Paths to Gaining an Edge
Miller outlines two broad approaches:
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Short-term, situational edges that work while you’re relatively unknown.
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Long-term strategic edges based on outplaying professionals fundamentally.
The first is opportunistic and temporary; the second is durable but demanding.
Reversing Live Reads (The Gimmick Edge)
The first approach relies on intentionally giving off misleading live reads. Instead of hiding tells, you exploit the fact that strong pros recognize common patterns and react to them automatically.
By presenting actions that usually signal weakness—while actually holding strong hands or well-chosen bluffs—you can induce raises, bluffs, or overcommitments from pros who believe they’ve correctly decoded you. This works best when:
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You’re unfamiliar to the local pro pool,
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You understand exactly how pros interpret certain betting lines,
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You can predict their reactions with high confidence.
However, Miller stresses that this tactic has a shelf life. Once pros realize you’re capable of reversing tells, they’ll stop reacting predictably. Because of that, these moves should be saved for especially profitable spots rather than overused.
Beating Pros the Hard Way: Finding Their Leaks
After gimmicks stop working, success depends on genuine outplaying. Miller emphasizes that even strong professionals:
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Still tend to play slightly too many hands pre-flop,
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Must decide how to dispose of marginal hands,
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Often rely on bluffing strategies that work well against weaker players but are exploitable.
Pros are more adaptive than recreational players, making them moving targets rather than static ones. To beat them, you must either stay a step ahead of their adjustments or build strategies that exploit their tendencies regardless of how they shift.
Interpreting Betting Lines and Ranges
A major theme is learning to interpret what a pro’s betting line implies about their range. Miller explains that pros often use different lines for:
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Hands seeking multiple streets of value,
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Medium-strength hands aiming for showdown,
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Give-ups and bluffs.
By combining:
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Board texture,
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Pre-flop range construction,
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The pro’s overall strategic bias (bluff-heavy vs. showdown-oriented),
you can estimate whether aggressive actions are more likely value bets or bluffs. Since no one bluffs at perfectly balanced frequencies, identifying over- or under-bluffing becomes a key source of edge.
Limits of Game Theory Optimal Play
Miller addresses the growing interest in Game Theory Optimal (GTO) poker. While GTO strategies have been solved for certain simplified poker formats, they remain unsolved—and possibly undefined—for multi-way, no-limit hold ’em.
Still, he suggests that studying GTO-inspired concepts can improve your understanding of balance, ranges, and exploitability. Even partial approximations of optimal play can give you an edge over professionals who rely more on habit, intuition, or imperfect live reads.
Final Takeaway
Miller closes by reinforcing that taking on pros is not about fearlessness or bravado. It’s about:
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Understanding ranges deeply,
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Recognizing when aggression is unsupported,
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Knowing when live reads matter—and when they don’t,
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Accepting that even pros are imperfect and exploitable.
At the highest regularly played live stakes, sustained success comes not from avoiding strong players, but from systematically identifying where their strategies fall short—and applying pressure with confidence and discipline.