Poker mathematics

As I mentioned in my first blog post while trying to describe my style of play, one of the very important styles and factors is poker mathematics. The mathematical player puts a lot of emphasis on pot odds, implied odds, possibly position, the likelihood that his opponent is holding what he is representing etc. As I mentioned, I think this is a very important part of poker and I will state here that I think it is one of the things that separates decent/good players from really good/great players. But, I truly believe that when analyzing the “data” we have to be aware of the fact that a lot of factors are at play and that without having all or in some cases even any of the rest of the story the “simple” math can sometimes be misleading. Let me explain.

A friend (who I would describe as an excellent and very knowledgeable player who is more mathematically inclined than I am) installed poker tracker, in a nutshell poker tracker is a very interesting and complex bit of software that analyzes and interprets your play in a very useful and granular method. It can tell you for example, exactly how many times you played a given hand and what the results were, in terms of chips won or lost. I sent him my tournament data to analyze (thousands of hands played primarily at 6 player tables that range in buy-ins from $2 to $50) and it classified me as an aggressive player, which I would not disagree with at all. But, while I think the software and the data it spits out is useful and I am really looking forward to digging into my data to see what I can learn from it, I think that raw data without proper context can be misleading. I’ll explain.

Last night he told me that while reviewing the data he saw that I voluntarily put money in the pot and lost a fair number of chips on A J offsuit. That was interesting data indeed but I need context that I am not sure the software can provide, I’ll let you know if I am proven wrong once I dig deeper into the software but for now here is my point.

Right after hearing that I have lost a lot of chips with A J offsuit I played a $5 6 player tournament, (these tourneys pay $21 to first and $9 to second) I would say I played that tournament conservatively (by my standards) and was caught in the grind that sometimes happens when you are on the bubble. We were down to three players and the blinds were $200/$400. Over a period of about 20 hands my stack fluctuated between 1,800 and 3,000 of the 9,000 chips in play, and I would say that the other 2 players were doing about the same. During that period a lot of blinds were being stolen, I took some and gave some as did the other 2 players, not a single raise or all in had been called and quite a few small blinds were folded to no raise. It was clear the game had ground to the point where players were trying to see who would survive. I was probably not more or less aggressive than anyone else during that period. With the blinds still at 200/400 I was on the button with 1,815 chips, over the next 2 hands I would have 1/3 of my chips committed from blinds alone. Guess what I picked up in that spot? A J offsuit … I am not kidding. So what’s my play here? All in. Small bind folds, BB calls with KK (ouch), I don’t hit and my tournament is over.

So check this out from a purely mathematical standpoint. I lost 1,800 chips on one hand where I voluntarily chucked my chips in the pot with A J offsuit. Most of the tournaments I play start you off with 1,500 chips so that loss cost me more than if I picked up AA on the first hand of a tournament and called some donkey who was all in with 9 10 and hit a straight on me. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the average pot size I win is 300 chips, I’d have to win 6 of those pots with A J offsuit to break even from this one loss alone. I am not saying the software or analyzing your game in this manner is a bad thing in the least, in fact, I am excited to take a look and see what it reveals about my game. But I do know that no matter what it tells me I might still toss all of my chips in the pot with A J offsuit if the situation seems to warrant it.

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