Top player = math whiz??

[Marlow]

MeanGene, my favorite poker blogger, posted a great one today. It speaks to my fears and general feeling of mathematical inadequacy (which is my sole focus of study now, FWIW), so I'm curious to get your reactions.

The OP is here.

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Read two very discouraging blog posts today. First, from Matt Matros, writing about a conversation he had with a friend:

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...and about half an hour into our conversation it occured to him that he'd never explained to me why it's optimal to bet Pi/4 of your hands in the infinite pot hi-lo [0,1] game with no check-raise. (Bill, along with his poker-thought partner Jerrod Ankenman, has spent a lot of time studying variants of this game. You can check out some of their results here.) Yes that's right, the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference comes into play when determining what fraction of your hands to bet in certain poker situations. Bill found a piece of paper and a pen and drew out the whole proof for me.


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Terrific. I pretty much have addition and subtraction down pat, and multiplying and dividing only occasionally give me a headache. But [censored] all if I have to start doing calculations involving Pi at the poker table. Forget it. Matros and Paul Phillips often talk about how they calculate the EV of situations and whether they're mathematically correct to call, fold, or raise. And I can follow the math. I understand where they're coming from. But I would need a ream of paper, several sturdy pencils, an eraser the size of my fist, and a towel for wiping my brow before I could run the numbers myself. And even then there's no way in hell I'd actually think that I got the numbers right, certainly not well enough to risk my chips.

At the poker table I'd be like those kids you used to see on TV long ago advertising some weird manual calculating system--you know, they'd give this adorable 7-year-old Korean girl nine 4-digit numbers to multiply and she'd thump her fingers on the table in some bizarre pattern and, four seconds later, come up with the answer. I'd have to learn that system to have a chance. Or have my friend Jim sweat me so I could flash my cards and let him crunch the numbers for me. I think it's time to put whatever dreams I had of being a world class poker players (or fighter pilot, or President) to rest.


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[radioheadfan]

How many people in the world do you think play infinite pot hi-lo [0,1] with no check-raise? That math is not relevant at all to 99.999% of poker games....

Multiplication, division, and probability & statistics 101 is all you really need for poker in terms of math....but most people who know these things can't apply them properly to the game anyways...forget about any proofs involving pi at the poker table...I think that thread was probably some sort of fancy joke......

[Marlow]

I haven't read Matt Matros' OP, but I would like to find it for the sake of reading the context. And of course, MeanGene used it for its utter absurdity and theatrical effect.

But what you say in the of your post assuages my fears somewhat - even the best players are pretty much relying on the same basic algebra that I am, right? Every time Mike Sexton comments on how Gus Hansen or Howard Lederer is a "Math Whiz" I scratch my head. I mean, christ... I can't do it all now, but it doesn't look THAT complicated!!

[Shaun]

I think your fears are unfounded. The best poker players in the world know poker math (not the pi thing), but that isn't what makes them the best. You should understand all the common situations you will face in a a given game, but the pi thing is certainly not neccessary. Are Paul Phillips and Matt Matros the best players in the world? Probably not. What about Brunson or Ivey or Greenstein? More likely. Out of those three only one is a "math guy", and I doubt that is what makes him a top player.

Math guys overstate the role of math in poker and non-math guys understate it. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

[Notorious G.O.B.]

You can take comfort in the fact that Matt Matros played pretty bad when he was on the World Poker Tour. At least in my opinion he did.

[DarreniHH]

Paul Darden (A Highschool dropout) is one of the best poker players in the day today, I garentee you paul doesnt do whatever the hell math you speak of.

[Michael Jensen]

this is blatantly false

go to the tournament forum

[cero_z]

Hi Marlow,

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But [censored] all if I have to start doing calculations involving Pi at the poker table.

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They're not doing those calculations at the table, either. The math Matros is addressing in that post is away-from-the-table analysis.

Without getting personally disparaging, I'll say that many of the "math players", while brilliant at math, are not brilliant poker players. They are usually very good players, and their contributions to the game can be monumental, but that doesn't mean you are outclassed when you sit down with them.

Plus, luckily for those of us who are too stupid/lazy to figure important things out, the math guys usually feel they must demonstrate how smart they are to everyone else (see numerous blogs), so they explain it all in writing. Or, they are wonderful philanthropists who only seek to brighten our world with the shimmering beacon of their thoughts. Either way, we get the cheat sheet.

[technologic]

let it be known that stu ungar was a mathematical genius.

oh, plus he had a photographic memory. could be useful for that card game he was sort of good at, gin i think.