allaboutpoker

The jist of what poker is really all about isn’t complicated at all.

Poker is all about making decisions that give you the highest possible expected value in every situation.  The expected value is dependent on how much money you must risk to play a hand, how much money you stand to gain if you win the hand, and what your chances of winning the hand actually are.

Here’s an example that I give to everyone who I’m teaching poker, involving two different scenarios:

The game is five card draw.  You hold 2s 9s 7s 4s 5d.  Your lone opponent bets $1, going all-in for his last dollar.  You  know for a fact thatyou are currently beat, there is no way that your nine high is the best hand.

In the first scenario, there is $8 in the pot, your opponent has bet $1, and it costs you $1 to call.

In the second scenario, there is $2 in the pot, your opponent has bet $1, and it costs you $1 to call.

The ONLY thing you can do here is call or fold.  The ONLY thing that will allow you to win this hand is throwing away the 5d, then drawing one of the nine remaining spades, thus making a flush.  For simplicity’s sake, we’re going to say that the odds against your drawing a spade and completing your flush are 4 to 1.   4:1 means that four times you will fail for every one time you succeed.

Let’s analyze both scenarios…

In the first scenario, you’re getting 9 to 1 pot odds.  $8 + $1  = $9 that you stand to win, and it costs you $1 to call, thus 9:1.

In the second scenario, you’re getting 3:1 pot odds.  $2 + $1 = $3 that you stand to win, and it costs you $1 to call, thus 3:1.

These two choices are quite obvious.

In the first scenario, you call, because your pot odds (9:1) are greater than your drawing odds (4:1).  This play would show a positive expected value, because over time, the rewards when you win would be greater than your losses when you don’t.

In the second scenario, you fold, because you pot odds (3:1) are worse than your drawing odds (4:1).  This play would show a negative expected value, because over time, the rewards when you win would would be less than your losses when you don’t.

If there were $4 in the pot and it cost you $1 to call, it would not matter which choice you made, because it’s a break even proposition.

That’s it, that’s the jist of poker.   True, this is a very simplistic example, and the real life situations you will face will often times be far more complex.  However, this is the basis of all poker decisions, deciding if the rewards outweigh the costs, and when they do, going for it!

Even on a longshot, when you will not make it, and thus lose whatever money you risk most of the time, if the odds are high enough you must still try anyway!  In Hold’em, there is a common situation where you’re going for a draw that’s about 11:1 against, but the pot will be big enough to try for it anyway.  I’ll discuss that situation in a later post.

For today, just make sure this concept is crystal clear, because you must understand this before you can begin to become a good or possibly great poker player in the future.

PokerGuru

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