www.garycarson.com
Basic Probability

Mathematics, Probability and Poker

Contents

Gary Carson's sites

I get my own business cards from them and it's a legit offer. They just charge for postage and it's quality work.

Secretary Problem

complete book of holdem poker
Buy it now
The Complete Book of Hold'Em Poker

Poker Math

Poker and probability

When most people think of poker math they think of discrete probabilities. Things like the probability of being dealt a pair of aces or the probability that a starting hand of a pair of aces will beat a starting hand of a pair of kings. That’s the sort of thing that comes immediately to mind when most people think of poker math.

In reality poker math is much, much deeper than the computation of discrete probabilities. Even poker probability is more than the computation of discrete probabilities.

Most college students don’t take a course in probability or a course in applied math other than a statistical methods course. They get in introduction to probability which consists mainly of combinatorial mathematics with some stuff about symmetric probability distributions. But most of the distributional discussion is labeled statistics in those courses and the combinatorial math is really just done because it’s needed to develop the binomial distribution. (If you don’t know what any of this stuff is don’t worry, it will all be covered in subsequent pages). So it’s no surprise that calculating the number of combinations of n things taken k at a time is what most people immediately think of when they think of probability.

Later on in these pages we’ll cover some probability topics beyond counting methods. And we’ll cover some properties and characteristics of probability distributions that probably weren’t covered in your intro stat methods course. In addition we’ll cover some other topics in mathematics which are useful in modeling and analyzing poker situations. Topics such as game theory, decision theory, and optimization theory. We’ll talk a little about the mathematics of how probabilistic processes evolve over time and how that applies to poker players.

Next

Alspach's Mathematics and Poker Page
Brian Alspach used to write a regular column on combinatorics for Poker Digest. He's a retired math professor from Simon Fraser University. 		Tom Ferguson's home page
He's a math ;professor at UCLA and Chris Ferguson's father. 		MathPages.com
A collection of straight-forward introductions to various topics in mathematics and recreational mathematics.

Google

Updates to this website will be announced in a newsletter distributed on the mailing list holdem


Click to subscribe to holdem

Kelly Betting