Poker Strategy

Since this blog started out originally to talk about poker, I figure I should have some entry regarding poker every couple of weeks. To start things off, I thought I'd talk a little bit about math and poker. I know that many of my friends don't consider the math aspect of poker as being important. And for anyone who rarely plays, I would somewhat agree. Ultimately, math plays a larger role for anyone who plays poker more regularly as it dictates whether you have a positive or negative expected value in the long term.

To make things easy, let's say I offer you an even money bet on a coin flip. If it's tails, I give you $1. If it's heads, you give me $1. If you were just to play this game 3 times, you could win $3, lose $3, or be somewhere in between. However, if you play this 100 times, you would have a expected value (EV) of $0. So whether you play or not, it doesn't make a difference over the long term.

Now let's say we change bet. I pay you $2 if it's tails, and you pay me $1 if it's heads. You can easily see that this is a positive EV (+EV) for you. Over the long term, every time you play, your EV is +$0.50. Which means that for every flip of the coin, you expect to win $0.50. The way the math works out is: (50% * $2) + (50% * -$1) = +$0.50. In other words, if you play this game 100 times, on average, you should win half the time (+$2 each time) when it's tails and lost half the time (-$1 each time) when it's heads with a net result of +$50. So $50/100 is an EV of +$0.50 per flip.

This applies to poker in terms of pot odds and outs which I'll explain next time.