Basic poker strategy

What is the goal of a poker player when he puts his money in the pot? It is clear that he wants to win. But what is the point of betting? The player kind of makes a bet that his combination is the best! Or it will become so when the last card falls on the table.

The actions of the player at the poker table are no different from the actions of the player on the stock exchange, investor-financier or any other businessman. The stockbroker buys today those shares that he thinks will be worth more tomorrow. An investor invests money in a project that will bring him profit in the future.

To be successful in business, there are many market factors that need to be considered. In poker, everything is the same, only your ability to assess the situation is paid every minute (or you pay someone's skill). Poker is a concentrated business, the quintessence of business!

Imagine that you are playing Texas Hold'em, where each player has 2 hole cards in his hands, and there are community cards on the table, the so-called community cards, and everyone is trying to make the best poker combination of five cards - their own and common ones lying on the table ...

And then the following card came:

AA (in your arms) J723 (on the table) KQ (at the enemy)

The pot is worth $ 100. You have already placed a bet and the opponent has called. Obviously he wants to buy a flush (five cards of the same suit). To do this, he needs a tambourine to come to the table as the fifth and last card. No other cards allow him to beat our pair of aces. We bet $100 and hope the opponent folds. Or, he can call the bet and try to buy his tambourine for a hundred dollars ...

What would you do in his place? Let's try together to determine which decision is correct.

Let's calculate the odds. There are 52 cards in the deck. We see 8. There are 44 left. Of these - 9 diamonds (there are 13 cards in total - down with the 4 that are in front of our eyes). The probability that the next card is a diamonds is 9/44, or roughly 20 %. Now let us consider how much it will cost our opponent this or that decision, if he always acts the same way, and this situation occurs 100 times.

Solution 1 - to pass. Then for 100 times he will put 0 dollars in the pot, but he will never win.

Solution 2 - pay 100 dollars. In 20 cases out of 100, he will win $ 200 - the 100 that is already in the pot, plus 100 - your bet (only $ 4,000), and in 80 cases he will lose his $ 100 bet ($ 8,000 in total).

As a result, for 100 tests, he will get the result: minus $ 4000. It turns out that each decision to call the rate in this position cost him exactly $ 40. In other words, solution 2 had a negative expectation.

This concept - expectation - is key in any game.
Especially in poker.

Now, if our bet in that position (two aces against a potential flush) were not $ 100, but for example, $ 20. Then the picture would be completely different: 20 times the flash collector would win $ 120 (total + $2400), and 80 times would lose 20 (total - $ 1600). For 100 hands, the total would be plus $ 800. That is, in each deal, the decision to "call the bet" would have a positive expectation of $ 8.

Thus, we have found out that the task of any player is reduced to choosing from the set of possible solutions the one that has the best mathematical expectation.

In this regard, I recall the following situation in roulette: already 10 times in a row red fell out, and the player pulls up all possible resources to bet on black. When asked what he is doing and why, he replies that, according to the theory of probability, it is practically impossible for 11 times in a row to fall red. Therefore, next time it will almost certainly fall out black (which should be bet on).

This player has forgotten only one thing: that the ball has no memory. The player confused the prior and posterior probabilities. If he were to play on the stock exchange, he would be exactly the broker who is being sold to stocks that are starting to fall in value. But what to do, "different mothers are needed, different mothers are important," someone has to lose.
But this topic is a completely different story.