Play better

Strategy

Four short lessons. The first is enough for your first game.

Your first game

Take a one-star character (the Heir, the Trainee) and a Rap Sheet Goal (Kingpin, Jack of All Trades, Specialist). They reward the obvious plan: commit crimes, Cover the big ones, keep count.
Watch your Heat like a fuel gauge. Two below the Limit is comfortable, one below is a Leak away from a Scandal. Lay Low a turn before you think you need to.
Hold one Cover of the type you commit most. A crime you cannot Cover is a crime you should commit at Heat 0 or 1.
Give your Favor chip early, for something real. The chip you are still holding in round 8 bought you nothing.

Three Tip-Offs and five Leaks in the whole Street deck. Every one played on a crime is one not waiting at the airport. When the third Tip-Off hits the discard pile, the doors are open.
Fourteen Covers: two for each of the four crime types, three Plausible Deniability and three Scapegoat that cover anything. If both Diplomatic Pouches are already gone, only a wild Cover saves a Smuggling crime.

Book when the Tip-Offs are spent or in hands that owe you a Favor. Book with a margin on money Goals: a Shakedown during the waiting round takes $3M.
Cool off first. A leaver at Heat 4 is one Leak from a collapsed Departure. Slow Boat costs two rounds but cools 2 Heat on the way out.
Medical Evacuation costs your whole hand, Shred included. Cheap, and defenceless. Take it when the table is out of tricks.

Laws cost $1M and a vote you may lose. Propose the ones that pay you twice: Legalise your crime type, Gag Order the round before you leave, Amnesty when you are the hottest at the table.
Persona Non Grata on the leader is the table's best brake. Expect it, and hold Reinstatement or a Favor from the proposer.
Sell your vote. A no vote is worth a Favor chip to a proposer who needs it, and a chip is worth a cancelled Tip-Off later.

The explainer's last chapter, Strategy, walks through the same ideas on a live table.