Best Poker Tips

People who have some poker education know what the EV is, or at least they think they do. It’s amazing how many of them get the concept wrong though. Poker is indeed an endless battle for EV+, but in order that you should understand the subtle aspects of this battle, you first need to make sure you do indeed know what EV+ is.

Let’s illustrate it through an example: two people make a $1 bet on a coin-flip. While it is entirely possible for either of them to win several bets in a row, at the end of the day, the ratio of wins will be 50-50, and since they both bet $1 on every bet, they’ll end up with the sum they started with. The expected value, or mathematical expectation on a bet like this is 0. If one of them were to lay $2 against the other guy’s $1 on the same coin-flip, the equation would change. The guy with the $1 bet would then enjoy a $0.5 advantage per bet, which means he would have a 25% positive EV. If they both stuck to the $1 bets, but the object of the bet itself would be changed in a way that player A would win 2 out of every 3 bets (on average) then he’d win $1 on every three bets, which means he’d have $0.33 positive mathematical expectation/bet. As you can see, the EV is dependant on two factors: the pot odds (the size of the bet required to win a certain size pot) and the odds on the bet itself. The combination of these two factors will tell you whether or not the situation you’re facing at the felt is a positive EV one or not. You should never act on negative EV situations because in the long-run it doesn’t matter that you get lucky every now and then. If you play negative EV you lose a little, regardless of the actual outcome of individual bets. Likewise, if you play positive EV, you win a little, even if you happen to take a bad beat on a few such hands.

The EV can also be influenced by many indirect factors. The table selection that you make may indirectly affect the EV you’ll be playing with in the game. Against weak players, your EV+ sky-rockets, against tough competition it shrinks. Rakeback is another factor that increases the EV. What that tells us is that the battle for the EV begins well before you actually sit down to the poker table. Selecting the right poker room, signing up for the right rakeback deal, evaluating the sign-up bonuses correctly are all parts of the big picture.

In regards to actual play, the battle for the EV begins as soon as the last player gets his hole-cards. Preflop betting and raising is already part of this battle. What a preflop raiser is usually looking to achieve, is to make some of the players who might otherwise check to the flop on drawing hands, fold. The simple fact that there will be fewer players left in the hand already means the bettor’s EV will increase, but preflop betting has a much more intricate goal too. Some of the players who feel their pocket cards are worth a call will call a preflop raise, and since most people play extremely tight after the flop, they’ll fold once the flop misses them. In addition to the fact that the competition thins out further, that leaves dead money in the pot, which increases the pot odds for all those who stay in. The turn card is the turning point of every hand. A player usually emerges with a clear lead at that point (that doesn’t mean –of course – that the river may not turn everything upside down), and if the field of opponents has already been thinned out at that stage, the focus shifts to making the most of the situation. Even though you may know at this stage that you’ll end up taking the pot, what follows is at least as important as what you did before you made your hand. You need to ‘milk’ the whole thing to your advantage and take down as big a pot as possible under the circumstances.

The battle for EV only ends when you take the pot down, but even then you may gear up for the next round which soon commences. Those who manage to act in EV+ situations most of the time, are the guys who make a steady hourly rate at the cash tables, and who advance deep into the money in tournaments. Sure, strategy will sometimes require you to act on EV-, but in those cases something usually more than makes up for the sacrifice.