I get asked a lot of things in my capacity as a poker player and one that I was asked the other day is how much maths is needed in the game……actually the answer is surprisingly little. But there is an awful lot of odds/probabilities/psychology/game theory and logic involved. If you look at a piece of software like PokerStove for example then it is clear that equity calculations can be done for you. If you ever hear top class players speak about the game then it becomes clear that their level of understanding is far and away better than yours.
This can leave people a little intimidated about playing higher levels. However poker is a language and that language has evolved just like any other but once you speak that language then what these people are actually saying and talking about makes sense. I am not strong at maths but I am strong in game theory and psychology which is clearly not the same thing. So from my own standpoint then I too do not base my game too much on maths but I do base it heavily on statistics/data/logic and a thorough understanding of my opponents.
If you play low enough then good solid card dependent strategies can and will take you a long way. If your post flop game is solid then you can be a winning player doing relatively simple things. However with obvious betting lines in certain situations then your opponents at higher levels will jump all over that. Say for example you raise pre-flop and it gets called by a single opponent who then calls two barrels on the flop and turn. This line of raise-call-bet-call-bet-call is common.
So if you check the river then a weaker player may check it back happy that you checked so that they don’t have to put any more money in the pot. But stronger players will call two streets for different reasons and one reason is to see what you do on further streets. So when you check the river then this looks exactly what it is and is someone either checking for pot control or giving up on a bluff. So if your opponent has nothing then a big bet gets you off all of your fresh air hands and puts you under severe pressure to make a tough call with mediocre hands.
The bet in question should involve things that go beyond a few dollars because the game becomes interesting only when the stakes are high where even a small game like situs Judi slot online sets the line up for a nice long round where you win and lose in quick succession.
This is what better players do to your betting lines at higher levels. They notice more what you have done in the past and adjust. This means that set strategies do not work as well once you hit higher levels. In fact if you wanted to play a lot of tables these days then I wouldn’t recommend playing any higher than NL100 and probably lower. So the upshot of this article is that there is not as much mathematics in poker as what you think but a tremendous amount of other data compensates for that.
