Some poker players will tell you that the best way to play poker is to consider poker math. That is true, as long as you don’t consider ONLY poker math, which is actually a huge disadvantage.

What is poker math? Well, to sum it up it’s all about making your decisions based on probability, and by taking into account ratios of what you can win versus how much you have to put in, in relation to your actual chances of winning. Poker math can even get more complicated when you’re trying to predict what how everyone else following you will play on their turn, and then incorporating this “guess” into your mathematical formulas to eventually reach a decision about what to do.

Poker math is a great tool to help you figure out what to or how to play in a specific situation. Poker math is reusable form hand to hand. The way to calculate pot odds from hand 15 and from hand 42 doesn’t change, it’s the data used in the formulas that changes. They weakness of poker math is that it is based on logic and on an analysis of facts alone. If poker was just about odds, then we could watch the WSOP being played by robots. And how boring would that be? The problem with poker math is that it can’t take into account the most important factor in poker, the things that sometimes makes the game “non logical”, that makes us stand up during the game, that makes us upset or extremely happy (depending on where you sit). This thing is simply our ability to lie and twist the truth. Lying and missdirecting is what makes gambling strategy so interesting!

Poker players lie. They lie all the time about al sorts of things because they want to send you incorrect signals. When facing someone who plays ONLY with poker math, it’s so easy to beat them! When you have a really strong hand and you’re sure you have them beat, you can calculate pot odds to figure out what bet they will call and the cut off to where they will fold. Remember, when you place your bet, your opponent will make that calculation in his head. One of my friends is a big fan of poker math. He’s always calculating pot odds. And guess what! He looses frequently, and he can be manipulated. Poker math is a great tool, but taking it too seriously makes you a weak player.

When is poker math useful? When you don’t know where you stand in a hand, or when it’s the last betting round of the hand and you need to act, poker math is a great tool to use. Maybe you’re chasing a flush, for instance. Sometimes, you need to chase them believe it or not. So many players will tell you not to chase flushes because the odd of making the flush draw is so low. That is so wrong. You can’t be this black and white in poker. Chasing a flush is the right play IF the price to call is right, as per your pot odds calculation. In other words, if you have 10% chances of making the flush, the right price to call is when you need to put in 10% or less of the total pot to make the call.

When players behave irrationally, this throws off your poker math. Sometimes you need to use other tools to get information, like raising for instance. I personally love poker math. It fascinates me. But I also recognize that it has its limitations and the best way to play poker is to use poker math along with an array of other tools. That’s what makes players become winners.