Since its beginning, online poker has been one of the favorite past-times of many people with poker rooms popping up all over the Internet, there are many people playing the games at all of the most popular gaming rooms on the Internet. Professional players are making a great living playing the games at many of these gaming rooms. One of the ways that these players are succeeding is by coming up with more concepts for playing poker.

In order for these player to win at playing a game of poker, they may employ a concept that is called Expected Value (EV) which is a limit poker type of game, this concept is a mathematical way of counting how many big bets players should win in each hand if he played the hand many times. The positive hand using EV is the one that makes you money. If you are playing full table or shorthanded games you should be able to win and your EV hand should be profitable.

In shorthanded poker, you hand is more likely to be a good EV hand because there are less people increasing the probability of having a strong hand. This simple fact brings thousands of players to the 6-man table far more often if they use the EV concept. When playing at these tables we know that competition is weaker because players will be more likely to be aggressive. When we have solid hands in a shorthanded game, we must take advantage of this and raise when we can and make higher bets. When playing an EV hand, we will have to be aware of what to do using simple mathematical principles.

Many players who have success at the poker games will use the concept of EV to help make every decision he makes in the poker game. He thinks in terms of whether he will win or lose and if he will lose money over all. If he knows that the poker decision will make him lose money throughout the life of his game, he knows this will have a negative EV. He knows however that folding gives his hand an EV of zero; this being so he knows that folding is often the right decision.

Say you are playing Limit Texas Hold’em, you will find that calculating the proper EV is hard but you must also keep the EV in mind even if you have a hard time calculating correctly. Calculations such as this are fairly easy to remember and you will want to try it out with different calculations to ensure you can do it.

An example: You are playing a game at the 1/2 table and your deal you have an 84 on a K96 flop. The person who has the small blind checks and you and another player (someone who plays tight) remain. There is 3 dollars in the overall pot. You will probably at this point ask yourself simply, “Should I bet on this hand?” Using EV you will find that the hand has a positive EV, if you expect the other players will fold two or more times in four. Should you try it the whole four times and you win once you have won three dollars but lost three dollars in trying it making you have an EV of 0. (This of course is true only if you are not called, or win using one of the many unlikely ways there are in poker.)

Remember it is very important that you take the time to analyze any and every decision you make, to see how it scores on your Expected Value concept. You will need to base these decisions on whether you think the will fail or whether you think you will succeed in a long period of time. While Poker itself is based on how the game goes through variations over the short term, you will want to make your EV decisions thinking about how much you want to win over the long term.

You may want to look at other examples to teach you to use EV, in this example you learn how the odds are worked out in your favor or against you.

In this example, your holding hand has A8, both cards are spades and your bet limits are 1/2, with 3 people before you and one person in front of you that goes on and accepts the blind. The flop in this hand comes with a K96 and in this hand there are two spades. In this EV hand you know that you have a chance of getting a flush, usually about 35%. However, every time you play this hand you will not win. Someone may have a better hand or a full house or some such hand. However with this hand, your odds of possibly winning the hand are very good, well over 25%, which means over the long run with this advantage you will make more money knowing that this is likely.

There are of course some other factors that you should think about such as should someone fold or it someone re-raises you, you will make less if they fold and you may lose if they re-raise you but overall you EV are still great and you could still be the winner. You may not always be able to make the right decision while playing but you will definitely win more often if you use one of these different EV practices to make your decision.

You should always think using the EV rules because with every situation it can be valuable. Even in pre-flop you will need to think in the term of value. You should figure that if your hand wins quite a bit then that particular hand should use that EV decision regularly. Checking and folding are sometimes the best decisions and you will not make money from them but keep in mind it keeps you EV out of the negative. Finally keep in mind that since you may have a much higher EV by forcing people to fold, and if you are going to use the EV concept you will need to play quite aggressively.

For more on specific EV of individual poker hands, see the Full Poker Hands EV Charts (a new screen will pop-up).

Sam @ Power Poker Course.




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