Mathematics Of Poker Review
Poker is a game of probabilities, and we use Poker Maths to help make the right decision. Don't worry you won’t need a calculator or be good at mathematics. 1 The Best Poker Book Reviews and PDFs. 1.1 Poker Book Reviews. 1.1.1 Absolute Gem: Telling Lies and Getting Paid review 1.1.2 Essential: Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones review 1.1.3 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King review 1.1.4 Tom McEvoy’s No-Limit Texas Hold’em book review.
While technology may have come a long way, learning by using pen and paper never goes out of style. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but, personally, I find this approach very effective as I tend to better be able to commit things to memory when doing things this way.
For a poker player, learning and understanding math behind the game is essential. Pretty much without exception, you can’t be good at poker if you don’t understand poker math, plain and simple.
There are many ways to go about learning these numbers but if the aforementioned approach appeals to you, then you’re going to love the Poker Workbook by James “SplitSuit” Sweeney. It is an extensive source of knowledge on poker math and percentages that requires your active involvement. It may feel like you’re back in school at times, but if you do it right you’re bound to learn a lot from these materials.
- Following the logical pattern of the course, the next main section covers the turn play. As Millar emphasizes right from the get-go, the turn is where things start to get tricky as you have all the flop considerations, and then you have to think about how a particular turn card plays into those considerations.
- Essential Poker Math. Alton Hardin, who has been playing poker for over ten years and is the founder and creator of the MicroGrinder Poker School have written this excellent book. This piece will teach you elementary poker math and how to use it to increase your winnings. It will cover probabilities and odds, expected value, pot equity, ratios.
- This book is very comprehensive and, with all of the mathematical equations, could even be intimidating to some. However, even if you skip the math, this book can be used as a reference guide for pre-flop raising and 3-bet ranges, push/fold charts and a glossary for nearly every poker term. As an advanced player, I found.
Poker Workbook in a Nutshell
So, what exactly is the Poker Workbook? It is a poker textbook containing more than 1,500 tasks involving poker math – from the simplest calculations to highly elaborate concepts. Every single aspect of the workbook is briefly explained and then followed by a number of calculations you’ll need to do on your own.
Concepts covered in the Poker Workbook include:
- Equity & EV
- Ranges & range building
- Pot odds & Implied Odds
- Open raising
- 3-bets & 4-bets
- Preflop all-ins
- Blockers
- … and more
Once you get the basic grasp of the concept that’s being discussed, you’ll need to apply that knowledge to real examples and come up with exact answers. You’ll need to calculate percentages, number of combos, pot odds, and more, and then fill in the answers. So, it’s not the kind of book that you can just read. It only works if you actually take time to do the exercises!
Train Your Brain to Think Poker
The main goal of the Poker Workbook is to teach you how to quickly make all sorts of calculations while playing. Although our brains aren’t computers and most of us can’t do complex calculations in seconds, almost everyone can develop a skillset to make very good approximations. More often than not, this is all you will need at the poker tables.
To tackle tasks in the workbook, you’ll need poker software such as Flopzilla and/or Equilab. These programs will let you build custom ranges and turn percentages into visual representations (and vice-versa) of hand ranges.
As you do this, you should become much better at visualizing what a certain percentage of hands looks like. You should also learn how to quickly figure out if a particular call is +EV or not based on how it relates to the pot and the strength of your own hand.
It all may seem abstract until you actually sit down and start doing it. That’s exactly why I like SplitSuit’s approach with this product. It forces you to sit down, think about, and physically write down your results. That way, you can’t fool yourself into thinking you were “close enough”. If the number is there and it’s off by a lot (or even a little), you’ll know you made a mistake in your calculations somewhere.
When you want to check your results, there is the separate Answer Key file, which allows you to quickly find answers for particular questions without having to go back and forth through the original book. This is really helpful as it saves time and lets you focus more on the learning process.
Slow but Efficient
The Poker Workbook was designed to be studied methodically. SplitSuit recommends doing a few pages every day and really focusing on getting the right answers, so this is probably the best way to go about it. If you’re already an experienced player, some of the earlier tasks will be easy to complete off the top of your head. If you’re new to poker math, though, it will take some time.
The good thing about the workbook is that you can organize your studying time so it doesn’t affect your other poker learning activities, such as watching videos or analyzing your hands. You can just do a few exercises whenever you feel like it. As you do more, you’re bound to become better at it.
Finally, there’s the price point: just $39. That’s affordable for pretty much any poker player. Moreover, when you consider it as an “investment” rather than a “money spend”, it’s tough to argue that you aren’t getting great bang for your buck.
So, to summarize, it may feel like “doing things the old fashioned way, with pen and paper” is a step back when compared to all the modern and interactive poker training systems out there but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. The more traditional approach to learning poker can still work very well and the fact you’re more involved with the materials will help you memorize much more information even if you don’t realize it at first.
If you want to learn poker math from scratch or if there are certain concepts that you don’t quite understand or struggle with, give Poker Workbook a go. Odds are you’re going to love it once you get into it and begin a daily poker study routine.
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Welcome to Casino Dyal. These poker chips were collecting dust in a spare bedroom and were absolutely perfect for this activity.
Inspiration for this game came from Math = Love, but Sarah used Bingo chips. I think using poker chips was one of the big keys to success here because it was very easy for me to 'pay' them, they could easily stack them up, and they could see their money grow as they exchanged for different color chips. I only used three colors and wrote on the board: White = 1, Red = 10; Black =100Each team started with 11 white chips. They were required to keep at least one chip off the board, so they could always get back in the game (and I would never take their last chip). I would use my projector to display a multiple choice question and give groups time to figure out their answers. Not only did they have to figure out their answer, but they also had to assess how confident they were in their answer. This discussion was my favorite to eavesdrop on and where I heard a lot of people who usually
I would give a warning and then five second countdown before I would call times and remind students, 'Do NOT touch your chips!' Then I could have group's share their reasoning or why they chose various answers. Usually with multiple choice questions, I hear a lot of 'I guessed,' but not when there was wagering involving. If group's went 'all in,' I would have them share how they knew their answer was correct, I would hear some great explanations then too about using process of elimination to get rid of obviously wrong answer choices. If groups only placed a few chips on the board, we could discuss why their confidence wasn't high in their answer.
Then I would remind students not to touch their chips and I would change the slide to the next question. As they worked the problem out, I would walk around and 'pay' them or take their chips. I just walked around with chips in my hand and matched their stacks, just like at the BlackJack tables. I would also cash in stacks of 10 white ones for a red or stacks of 10 red ones for the coveted 'black chip.'
I expanded this game beyond just multiple choice by having them stack chips on their answer. For one question, they had to fill out this two-way frequency table. In other questions, they would draw a graph or even write an equation. By stacking the chips on top of their answer, there was no way for them to cheat and change it. (I had plenty of eyes watching to make sure no one touched their chips after I gave the correct answer).
Sometimes we played for homework passes, extra credit points, or a Dum-Dum. The students would come in begging to play 'That Super Fun Poker Chip Game' - anytime you can get kids begging to do math - it's a 'Winner Winner Chicken Dinner' in my book!