The Mathematics of Poker Strategy

It makes you groan when you hear about it. You hope that you never have to deal with it by making good general decisions. You may even have failed it in your first year at college and decided then and there that you wouldn’t have anything more to do with it, but the mathematics that online poker strategy requires is quite easy in comparison to all of these other things. If you can do simple arithmetic like adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying then you are going to be good to go as far as the mathematics of poker strategy are concerned. In particular, division and percentages are important because of the scenarios outlined below.

Probability

The first element of mathematics in poker that you need to know for poker strategy is probability. Say for example that you are in a 10-handed poker game of Texas Hold‘Em and you need to know the likelihood of rivering a three of a kind if you already have a pair. Well, you can figure this out through basic probability. You know six of the cards in the 52-card deck, leaving 46 of the unknown cards (you
need to count all unknown cards including the cards of your opponents because one of the two remaining cards of that rank is just as likely to be one of those cards as it is to still be in the deck). Since there are 46 cards left and two cards of your rank left, you know the chances of getting a third card of your rank on the first card are 1 in 23. This means that the odds against you getting your third card of the same rank on the river are 22 to 1.

Pot Odds

The second element of mathematics to know in poker strategy is pot odds. Pot odds are simply the odds that the pot is laying you to call. If there is $30 in the pot and you need to call a bet of $5 to see the next card, then the pot odds are 6 to 1. It is as simple as that. You can also expand pot odds to include implied odds, which take into account what will happen on the next card. If you are in a $2/$5 limit game against a single opponent and you are facing $30 to $5 (or 6 to 1) pot odds on the turn but think that you can get another bet out of your opponent if you hit your winning hand on the river, you can change those pot odds of 30 to 5 to implied odds of 35 to 5 and factor in that extra bet that you think you would win. This would make the final odds in the calculation 7 to 1 as opposed to 6 to 1.

Putting Them Together

Compare the odds against you hitting your hand to the pot odds and if the latter is better than the former, you are mathematically good to call. If you are 4 to 1 against making your hand on the river but are being laid pot odds of 6 to 1, calling is the mathematically correct thing to do because it has a positive expected value.

More News

• Men Appeal Gambling Laws in S.C.
• SC Poker Players Under Attack !
• USC Grad Takes 5th at 2011 WSOP
• South Carolina Gambling Laws
• Carbon Poker Upgrades