Calculating Poker Odds - Texas Hold 'em
Strategy
In the world of poker, there are a lot of
resources for the serious player. Among them there articles
about the mathematical aspect of gambling. Nobody likes
these articles. Writers don’t like writing them, and
players don’t like reading them. If you’re both
a player and a writer, you really don’t like them.
However, both players and writers need them.
Knowing the math and being able to apply it
can greatly improve your poker game. This is a slightly
unorthodox math article, but it could still have a huge
effect on how well you bank in your next tournament.
The first piece of advice that I would give is simple,
and at first it would seem like bad advice. My advice is
to not be exact. Poker calculations can be taken way too
far, and a bit of guesswork never hurt anybody. For example,
if I am doing the math on the improvement potential of a
hand and the result comes to 23 in 100, it is best to round
it to 25 in 100 or 1 in 4, because those are numbers that
are easy to deal with.
This brings me to a similar piece of advice that most experienced
players will have already heard. "Don’t count
your chips at the table." Most people explain this
old proverb as meaning that you never know how quickly things
could turn around in a poker game. While that’s true,
the deeper meaning of the proverb is that counting your
chips at the table is both a waste of time and a distraction.
Knowing how many chips are in one pile and how many piles
are in your stack gives you a rough idea of how much you
have. Similarly, you can count your opponents chips by looking
at the size and number of the piles in their stack.
Now we can discuss the math. The first mathematical insight
I can give you is to memorise only useful information. It
does not help you to know the odds of being flopped a royal
flush. (Astronomically minute.) However, you should always
keep in mind the odds of improving a pocket pair to three
of a kind on the flop as an example.
Read our article on poker
odds and outs.
Another thing: make a cheat sheet. Make a small list of
important probability facts (pre-flop hand improvement odds,
draw odds, etc) that you’d like to learn. Bring them
to your game with you and refer to them when you need to.
Try to memorize them as you go, but don’t be afraid
to look at your cheat sheet. Some more experienced players
may look down on this, but they either have done it before
themselves or lost money that they shouldn’t have because
of sloppy math.
Basically, the mathematical side of poker has a learning
curve. Learning raw facts by rote is not the most effective
way to do things. You need to have a feel for the hands.
With time and experience you’ll be able to do approximate
calculations in your head, and the odds you know will subconsciously
effect the way you view a hand.
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