In order to get beyond the cards you need to be thinking about your opponents and the situation you are presented with. Here are the basic levels of thinking:
The first Level: What cards do I have?
The second Level: What do my opponents have?
The third Level: What do they think I have?
The fourth Level: What do they think I think they have?
The fifth Level: Yes, you can keep going and going…
Theoretically we could keep going to deeper levels of thinking, but you’re only going to find a very limited percentage of players who are capable of thinking this deeply – and if they are, they’re probably over thinking the situation anyway.
While getting to deeper and deeper levels of thinking does mark a more mature stage of poker skill, the best players recognize if their opponents are even capable of thinking that deeply.