Phil Ivey say Math not as important!

[SossMan]

[ QUOTE ]
Not sure if anyone wrote about this before but from last week's wsop circuit event. Phil I say math isn't as important as most people think. He says it's more about instincts and reading the players. This is very different than what most of the math guys think. The math guys seem to think the math it critical to success. Yet Phil Ivey(who to some is considered one of the best players in the world including sklansky i believe, if i'm wrong about that let me know. but i thought i have heard him praise Phil I before) says math isn't as important as most think.

So whose right? Phil I. or the math guys that say its all about the math?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not an either or proposition. It's also very much a matter of context. When Phil says 'math' is overrated, he is not likely talking about basic pot odds for a flush draw, stuff like that.

More importantly, given enough information, everything is simply a math problem. However, properly assessing this information on the fly is the 'feel' part of the game. Reading the other players' psyche and mood and actions and tells and behaviours all go into assessing their probability of doing something or having something. Those somethings are then the assumptions that you use to start your math problem. That's really the feel part of poker.

[Quicksilvre]

For pot-limit and no-limit poker, I agree. I'm not so sure about limit, but I imagine that, with the zillions of math-guy players flooding it, math could very well be over-empthesized.

[REL18]

Wow its funny its two things one the math doesnt matter cuz its just division addition subtraction multiplication so he doesnt think about it two he wants all you suckers to believe that not knowing pot odds and implied odds is a good thing lol! Somebody gimma a counter arguement as to how it could be bad to know those things and dont say then u dont spend enough time thinking about the players cuz my 9 year old sisters brain could do pot odds and implied odds

[Yeknom58]

I'm sure other have said this but..The math is basically simple..it's the accuracy in which in you plug in the variables (feelings/reads) that make the great ones great. Phil was making a pretty simple point that many people will probably misunderstand.

[Hold'me]

[ QUOTE ]
At higher levels, the opponents don't frequently make fundamental mathematical errors. They aren't going to draw to a hand they're not getting odds to, because they understand the basic math of the game. Of course at these levels simply knowing the math isn't going to give you any edge, and you will have to use other skills to beat them--namely deceiving them into making FTOP errors by convincing them that you have a hand that you don't really have.

[/ QUOTE ]
Read The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King by Michael Craig. Andy Beal discovered the exact opposite of what you stated above about the higher level players not making mathematical errors.

[Leonardo]

I am always alarmed when people say poker math is easy. It isn't. Yes, it is multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. The thing is, if you use a tree structure to model the possible hands, the possible plays for each hand, and then the mathematically correct play for each one, then the weighted correct play overall given the possible hands/plays, then you have such a large number of calculations to do that it is very far from easy. If you have a piece of paper and a pen and a few hours to work out each hand, yes the math is not so difficult. But you don't. There is no one in the world who is correctly working out the math on each hand, so stop saying it is easy.

Second point. Perhaps for Phil the math is less important because he is very good at reading hands. The smaller number of potential hands that an opponent has, the easier the math becomes. If you are dead sure your opponent has a certain hand, the math is so easy that it doesn't matter, a monkey could do it. If you are certain it is one of two hands, it gets harder, quickly, but the correct play is still fairly obvious. Once there are three or four different potential hands, the number of branches increases astronomically and the math is very difficult. Hence Phil's very good reading skills make decisions more straight forward, and his strategy and math isn't so complex. Compare that with someone like Sklansky, who himself has said he doesn't read hands as well as the very top pros like Ivey. Since Sklansky has more hands to put his opponent on, the strategy and math become more and more important. So it isn't a matter of math not being important, because it simply is. It is a matter of explicit math making a difference, and for Phil it makes a lot less difference than for most.

[The Don]

[ QUOTE ]
I am always alarmed when people say poker math is easy. It isn't. Yes, it is multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. The thing is, if you use a tree structure to model the possible hands, the possible plays for each hand, and then the mathematically correct play for each one, then the weighted correct play overall given the possible hands/plays, then you have such a large number of calculations to do that it is very far from easy. If you have a piece of paper and a pen and a few hours to work out each hand, yes the math is not so difficult. But you don't. There is no one in the world who is correctly working out the math on each hand, so stop saying it is easy.

Second point. Perhaps for Phil the math is less important because he is very good at reading hands. The smaller number of potential hands that an opponent has, the easier the math becomes. If you are dead sure your opponent has a certain hand, the math is so easy that it doesn't matter, a monkey could do it. If you are certain it is one of two hands, it gets harder, quickly, but the correct play is still fairly obvious. Once there are three or four different potential hands, the number of branches increases astronomically and the math is very difficult. Hence Phil's very good reading skills make decisions more straight forward, and his strategy and math isn't so complex. Compare that with someone like Sklansky, who himself has said he doesn't read hands as well as the very top pros like Ivey. Since Sklansky has more hands to put his opponent on, the strategy and math become more and more important. So it isn't a matter of math not being important, because it simply is. It is a matter of explicit math making a difference, and for Phil it makes a lot less difference than for most.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let's be honest... nobody is actually doing the math on ranges. They are calculating the pot odds and making estimates on ranges based on logic and deductive/inductive reasoning (attributes important to a successful mathematician). Anyone who has gone further than Calculus 1 knows that poker math is VERY simple.

[Yeknom58]

Dude you're funny.

The basic math is fairly simple..what you're describing is pretty complicated but also pretty useless. So if I say weighing myself in the moring is pretty simple are you going to say, NO, NO, NO..you have to weigh yourself and subtract the mass of air in your lungs and continually subract the water that is being evaporated on your skin and then adjust for the airpressure in your house and add in the dog fart you inhaled when you got up..etc.

I can say I weigh 205 but you'll tell me I'm actually 205.1265789956458897. You can complicate any problem but if the simple solution gets you 99.9% accuracy I'm going to go out on a limb and say the other methods are just silly.

As for your second point..yea, I just said that in my original post only I used about 1/4 the amount of words.

[Leonardo]

No problem, so what you are talking about is estimation, based on logic. It is not mathematically correct though. You may think that being about right is fine, and without ever going through the whole process you will never know how close your estimates are. If you are doing well in the long run, they are probably good. But I think that going through the process is very valuable, and can only help with estimations at the table.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

The only difficult thing about poker math is doing it very quickly on multiple tables and still having enough time to devote to the other equally important aspects of the hand.