| Posted by: zachvac at December 5, 2007, 5:12 pm | | Topic: Math vs Reads Forum: Card Chat |
You simply cannot use math without making a read first. Poker's a game of missing information. You try to acquire all that you can with reads, mainly an accurate range of hands your opponent may have. Math is never wrong, but using the wrong math to support a flawed hypothesis (read) can mess you up big time. If you have your opponent on a premium hand PF and the flop comes 234 and then you find out he actually had 56, no math in the world will help you.
The point is, in poker, unless you are cheating, there is always missing information. If there is no way to acquire it, then math will help you. For example a person has yet to act, you know exactly what they are holding. They are holding a random hand. You can use math to see what the correct play to make against a random hand is. Now let's say a ery tight player raises preflop. All of a sudden we're not up against a random hand anymore. A loose player from the button who likes to steal raises preflop. You raise and he raises back at you. At this point you have to figure out:
1. what range of hands he has
2. What kind of action you can expect on later streets
3. what hand do you have?
#3 is easy, first 2, not so much. Math is for filling in the blanks. It fills them in perfectly if they are really blanks. If they're not, and there's more information you could be getting, the math will be off. If you miss a tell and the odds of him bluffing are actually now much higher, but you use math that neglects that fact, you're throwing away money. Math is used to fill in when you don't have all the information. The better the poker player, the better you can narrow down their range and how they will play the hand later.
If you teach a beginner how to use math in poker, they're still going to suck. You teach a good player how to use it, they can use it to fill in what they don't have and determine the correct play to make based on their reads. See the point? Math comes after reads, and they work together. Reads gather information and math fills in missing information, because in the end, the odds (math) all even out.
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