THING 3: LEARN COMMON SCORING PATTERNS.
Very little paints a target for the Runner like advancing a card. Unless the Runner is asleep, they're going to notice when you put advancement counters on a card, and probably get suspicious. Every time your turn ends with an advanced card in the root of a server, you're giving the Runner four clicks to focus on the card with a neon arrow pointing to it.

It should come as no surprise, then, that you should probably aim to minimize the times that happens.

Imagine you have no sneaky tricks in hand like Seamless Launch. You're just going to advance with the basic "advance a card" action. What's the best click to install a 5/3 agenda like Send a Message, if you want to minimize the opportunities for the Runner to get in?

The agenda takes five clicks to advance (and score, because scoring doesn't take a click). You get three clicks a turn. If you're advancing manually, and as fast as possible, the only way to avoid leaving a 5/3 agenda out for two Runner turns is to install it on your first click:

1. You install the agenda and advance it twice.
2. The Runner has a turn.
3. You advance three more times and score.

If you install on your second click and immediately begin advancing, you're giving the Runner two full turns to respond to the apparent threat.

If you install on click #3, you can bluff the unadvanced agenda as an asset or upgrade for a turn. That's probably better than advancing it once and drawing the Runner's attention, but it will still be in the root of your remote server, potentially vulnerable.

But notice how each choice has distinct implications. A turn that goes "Install-Advance-Advance" signals to the Runner that you're likely attempting to score out an agenda with advancement requirement of 4 or 5—because if it was a 3/x agenda, why draw attention to it by advancing? This is useful for bluffing, too: to make an Urtica Cipher seem like a big, valuable agenda, you probably shouldn't install it on click #3.

It behooves Runners to know this too. A Corp installs something click #2, advances it once, then spends their next turn advancing it again—but they still don't score it. That's a really suspicious play pattern! It would make sense for a 4/2 agenda, but if they haven't scored it, that seems unlikely. The card could be a 5/3, but if it were, why did the Corp install it in a manner that left it so vulnerable? As the kids say, seems sus.

Now, none of this is ironclad. #Netrunner is a bluffing game, after all. A Corp could definitely install and advance an agenda in a "suboptimal" way to throw the Runner off their scent. The Clearinghouse/Urtica Cipher fork makes running an advanced card and letting it sit both potentially dangerous. And cards like Neurospike incentivize the Corp to score in a different pattern. But to play skillfully in a bluffing game, it helps to understand the baseline assumptions—and in Netrunner, that includes understanding how the Corp wants to score certain agendas.

THING 4: LEARN THE MAGIC NUMBERS
At a certain level, #Netrunner players manage to keep a huge array of potential threats in their minds at all times. There are players who could, off the top of their heads, recite the full card text of, I dunno, Anansi. They know how much it will cost the Corp to rez, what strength they need to beat, and what will happen to them if they don't.

I'm not that good a player, and I've been playing Netrunner for something like 8 years. Moreover, I don't think you're likely to develop that awareness when you're just starting out.

What you can focus on, however, are certain "magic numbers." If you keep just a few of these in your mind, you can play with a better sense of strategy.

The first of such numbers is... ahem...

FIIIIIIVE GOOOOLDEN CREDS!

Five is a critical number for credit totals. The most ubiquitous economy cards in Netrunner are, of course, Sure Gamble and Hedge Fund. You'll be hard-pressed to find decks without them, especially as a new player. And in Netrunner, as in our present capitalist hellscape, it takes money to make money. Both these cards cost 5 credits to play.

If you've ever played a game where you were hovering between 0-4 credits, you know how painful it is to do anything. Playing any card feels like a blow to the gut. Your possibility space narrows to a sliver. You'll likely spend a turn clicking for credits—which gives your opponent a huge tempo advantage.

Staying above fiiiiive goooolden creds means you can always play a Hedge Fund or Sure Gamble to bounce back. It lessens the likelihood of economic logjam. There may be times when it makes sense to dip below that threshold, but be careful about it, because if you're spending most of the game there, you're probably on the back foot.

The other set of "magic numbers" looks like this:

3/1, 4/2, 5/3

These are "baseline" agenda stats. The first number in each pair is the advancement requirement; the second is the point value.

You will see some variation, of course—System Gateway gives each faction a singleton 3/2 agenda, for instance—but these are often the default stats for agendas. 1-point agendas often require 3 advancements. 2-pointers tend to require 4, and 3-pointers 5.

This affects scoring patterns, as discussed above in Thing 3. It's also useful information for the Runner, because it allows you to gauge the level of current threat. If you suspect a card with an advancement requirement of 4 or 5, you're looking at 2-3 points. That's going to read very differently depending on whether the Corp currently has 1 point or 5.

3/1, 4/2, 5/3, combined with FIIIIIIVE GOOOOLDEN CREDS! Keep those in mind and you can start to make more informed decisions.

THING 5: PLAN YOUR TURNS
#Netrunner gives you a smorgasbord of options for how to spend your actions each turn. Usually, new players tend to play click-by-click, only thinking about their next click once it's imminent.

To play more skillfully, broaden your horizons. You get a certain number of clicks each turn—try to plan how you're going to string them together.

For instance, think about drawing cards. Whether you're a Corp or a Runner, drawing cards gives you more options. It also, if you're a Corp, runs the risk of pulling an agenda into HQ. If you want to take advantage of those options (and potentially avoid an agenda flood), you should probably draw cards closer to the beginning of your turn.

Or say you're planning to run a server. Do it early in your turn, and you have time to respond to whatever nasty things arise during the run. Do it late, and you lose the option for responsiveness, but you have more time to prepare (including, for instance, drawing cards as a temporary buffer against damage).

As I said above regarding scoring patterns, if you install and advance an agenda without thinking about your scoring pattern, you run the risk of giving a canny Runner more opportunities to steal it.

Think about your whole turn as a discrete unit. Think about what you want to accomplish by the end of each turn (and how it will feed into the next), rather than only what each click will do for you.