Probability Stack

To be able to play poker well I think you need to be able to apply probability. Everything is built on the foundation of probability. Consider something like implied odds.

This example hand will illustrate. A tight player in a no limit game open raises 6x the BB from early position. It folds around to you on the button with 77. When villain makes this unusual size preflop raise he always has AA or KK. He will move all in the rest of his stack on any flop because he wants to win the hand there. What should you do, fold or call?

As stated, this question cannot be answered correctly. It problem is that it doesn't say how much money you and villain will have left in your stacks when the flop comes down. Without that you don't know your implied odds for spiking a 7 on the flop and stacking villain.

To use implied odds effectively you need to have a strong grasp on

---- implied odds extends pot odds
--- pot odds applies expected value
-- expected value applies probability
- probability is the chance that some event will occur


So at the base of the stack is probability. If your foundation in probability is weak or non-existent then you can't build anything on top of it and you'll be at a disadvantage when playing against opponents who have this ability.

Do you understand probability? The Monte Hall problem is a good probability comprehension test. Here's the problem quoted from Wikipedia

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

If you can answer this correctly and explain your answer within two minutes just thinking about it in your head without writing anything down then you have a good understanding of probability and you can easily use the concepts of probability and pot odds to your profit in poker.

If you can't get it then you just don't really get probability and you likely won't be very good at poker.

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I once wasted about half an hour of my life on this problem. An individual was struggling with it and asked me about it. I explained the solution slowly to him several times, providing step by step descriptions and even doing a nice series of diagrams. After numerous attempts going over it he seemed to indicate he finally got it.

Then like two minutes later he asked something about the numbers on the doors which showed that he hadn't grasped it at all! He was still as confused as when he initially read the problem.