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Poker Mathematics

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Poker MathematicsPoker is a game of skill, and using the ability to read situations and opponents to give you the advantage in each hand you play. It is also a game of mathematics, where you should be able to calculate the odds of either you or your opponent winning the hand in any situation.

People often ask me if they can win without integrating poker mathematics into your game. While it’s not certain that players who don’t use mathematics will not beat the game, correctly calculating the odds is a useful weapon that will give you the edge over players who don’t use them.

Poker mathematics can be used in many situations, but they are mostly used when a player is on a draw such as a straight draw or a flush. If your opponent makes a bet and you are on a draw, you have two options: call and try to complete the draw with the next card, or fold and give the pot to your opponent. A player who has good knowledge of poker mathematics will always know whether he should call or not, while a player who doesn’t know poker mathematics will hesitate. If the bet is big enough to scare him, there’s a good chance he will fold. But if the bet is small, he will probably call. On the other hand, the player who learned how to use poker mathematics will easily work out the pot odds and act accordingly. Pot odds take into account the amount of money your opponent has bet in relation to the pot and the probability of completing your draw, to help you make the right decision.

Poker mathematics can also be used in a situation of “Expected Value.” For example, what should you do if you are on the river holding a bottom pair and that your opponent bets $8 into a $20 pot? Mathematics can determine whether or not you should call if you can’t tell from the way the hand played out whether your opponent has a better hand than you or not.

So how do poker mathematics work? The first thing you should do is estimate the probability that your opponent is bluffing and has a worse hand than you. For example, if your opponent bluffs 1 time for every 3 times he has the best hand on the river, there is 1 in 4 chance that you’ll have a better hand than him and 3 in 4 chance that you won’t. For every 3 times you lose, you will win 1 time (3-to-1). If you call and end up having the best hand you will win $14 once, but if you call and have the worst hand you will lose $4 three times. So if you called every hand, you would lose $12 (3 times $4) and win $14 after four hands. You would be making a net profit of $2 if you called on the river every time, thus you should make the call.

The explanation above might seem complicated but it’s not. To put it simply, I just said that you should always have better odds of winning than what the pot is giving you. In the example above, you had to call $4 to win a $14 pot, which is $3.5-to-$1. The odds of winning are 3-to-1, so you have better odds of winning than the odds in the pot.

When you use mathematics in poker, remember that your decisions will not have an immediate effect on your winning. Working out the odds in a particular hand and making the right call does not guarantee you will to win the hand. Also, if you lose the hand, it does not mean you have made a poor decision. If you keep making the correct decisions based on odds you will earn more money in the long term. Perseverance is the key, so don’t let short-term results in the have an effect on your correct play decisions. That’s how you’ll become a winning poker player.

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