Poker is commonly regarded as a game of chance. Armed with a few good luck charms and pockets full of betting money, millions of people each year find themselves staring across a poker table, just playing the odds. But every time they choose to call, fold or raise a hand, they rely on strategies more than they do on luck, whether they realize it or not.
Brian Alspach, a math professor at Newcastle University in Australia, said he primarily uses mathematics when playing the game. Alspach, who visited the University last semester to lecture about mathematical applications in poker, said all poker players use mathematics in some form.
“I see poker and math relating in three typical ways,” Alspach said. “First, is the mathematics used while you play, the mathematics that change how you think about the game and the mathematics questions that arise from poker.”
He used the concept of “pot odds” to explain how players should bet in certain situations, without considering their opponents’ personalities. Pot odds are the ratio of the current pot size to the cost of calling a certain hand. For example, if the pot holds $100 and a player must call $10 to stay in the hand, then the player has 100-to-10, or 10-to-1 pot odds. When the odds are high, players should call or raise. When the odds are low, players should fold, Alspach said.
“You have been dealt an ace and a jack, and your pot has $90 in it,” he said. “It will cost $10 to call. There are three options: fold, call or raise. What should you do in this type of situation?”
Typically, a player in this situation should call. In addition to this math-based betting technique, he said it is still important to “randomize” to throw other players off.
“You can introduce some randomization techniques into a game,” he said. “If you do the same thing every time in a similar situation, players will pick that up, so you want to randomize your play a little bit.”
Alspach cautioned players from betting too liberally, even if there are some incentives to do so.
“It’s not [of] interest [to] the individual,” Alspach said, adding that the chances of collecting on the bonuses usually are very small.
Evaluating body language can prove helpful — but only when used as a secondary technique to math and probability.
“As it turns out, the part of the body giving away most of the information is the feet,” he said. “People will get happy feet and bounce a little bit.”
Like Alspach, Eric Froelich, a 2005 University graduate and winner of events in the 2005 and 2006 World Series of Poker tournaments, said he also relies on math as well as psychology.
“I think that the game is largely based on math, but you need both intuition and the math,” he said. “The intuition comes in because you play your opponent’s hand. It’s not like chess, where you see everything they have. You need to get in a range of percentages and values.”
Unlike Alspach, who has 50 years of experience playing poker, Froelich is a relative newcomer to the game.
“I started, I guess, right about when I was about to start college by teaching myself,” Froelich said. “I started playing more seriously late into my second year of college right before I turned 20.”
After taking some time off from school, he decided to dedicate himself further and play the game more seriously.
“I was continuing to fall behind, and during that time I lived at home for a little bit,” he said. “Right when I turned 21, I won a tournament where I got to play in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.”
Froelich became the youngest player in series history to win an event bracelet.
“I got a lot of media attention because I was the youngest to win,” he said. “After that, I didn’t play for nearly a year. But when the World Series [of Poker] came around, I got sponsored. When I went out again, I became the youngest person to win twice.”
He relies on the same techniques now as he did then.
Although he attributed some success in poker to luck, Froelich said, “Poker is not a game where the best player is not going to win.”
Alspach added that knowing when to fold is necessary as well, because the best poker player knows when not to go up against lackluster odds.
“The most important thing to be able to do is read people and to narrow down the opponents’ cards,” Alspach said. “The ability to fold is important, because even your good hand might not win in that situation.”
Though there is no tried and true technique to play every hand that is dealt, Froelich and Alspach emphasized the importance of having a strategy when one sits down to play.
“It’s really not that easy,” Froelich said.
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