Why is it so important to know the maths of poker?
In today’s poker world even the ‘feel’ players realise that it’s important to know some of the maths, because even if you’re a good intuitive player, you’re not going to know what hands to play pre-flop and how often you need to bluff. You need that knowledge, just to be aware of base strategy. What’s the most important concept to get to grips with? A lot of my book – The Mathematics of Poker – is aimed at achieving the highest expectation of a play, which is how much money, on average, you’re going to get from a given situation. If a play makes $10 90 percent of the time and loses $50 10 percent of the time then your expectation is $4: (10 x 0.9) – (50 x 0.1) = 4. It’s a fundamental concept, not just in poker but in all gambling. You want to maximise that expectation in the majority of cases. The place where you don’t want to do this is with your entire bankroll. The reason for that is because of a more global strategy of managing your money. That’s where the concept of marginal value
