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bluetag
07-19-2004, 09:59 AM
what is Bayes Theorem?

BugsBunny
07-19-2004, 12:26 PM
Google is your friend.
Bayes Theorem (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayes-theorem/)

Gally327
07-19-2004, 02:52 PM
You probably are reading this in The Theory of Poker. At first, I wasn't really familiar with the theory. However, you dont really have to have a total grasp on the theory as a whole to get what Sklansky was saying there. He just wanted to show you the backing behind how to make winning plays more often than not in those situations. When you read past it to the examples, it is easy to understand what he is trying to drive home in that section. I guess that is why his books are so good.
Ryan

playerfl
07-19-2004, 03:28 PM
I've been trying to learn this myself.

This is how I think it applies to poker:

-you get dealt a hand. you guess the chance that you will win the pot. call it chance 1.
-you see the flop, and your hand improves, so your guess about the chances of winning improve. Chance 2 is higher than chance 1 as the result of new, yet not complete, information.
-you see the turn, and your chances improves more. Chance 3 is higher than chance 2 as a result of even more, although not complete information.

the process of figuring your "chances" is Bayesian Inference.

this is a different way of figuring odds than just playing out the opposing hands 10,000 times and then figuring the odds ( this is brute force Monte Carlo simulation ).

somebody correct me if I'm off base here, not a stats expert just trying to learn myself.

jedi
07-20-2004, 01:50 PM
[ QUOTE ]
You probably are reading this in The Theory of Poker. At first, I wasn't really familiar with the theory. However, you dont really have to have a total grasp on the theory as a whole to get what Sklansky was saying there. He just wanted to show you the backing behind how to make winning plays more often than not in those situations. When you read past it to the examples, it is easy to understand what he is trying to drive home in that section. I guess that is why his books are so good.
Ryan

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a point of clarification. This is NOT a theory. It's a theorem. The words look the same, but are pretty different things.