Practical Poker Math: Basic Odds And Probabilities for Hold'Em and Omaha

by Pat Dittmar

What are the odds of winning at poker if you don’t know the odds in poker? Practical Poker Math provides a complete and easy-to-understand explanation of the basic odds, probabilities and expectations in Hold’Em and Omaha. All the formulations are completely open and are demonstrated via easy-to-follow, colour-coded calculations. Pat Dittmar has aimed this book at beginning through semi-pro players who want to improve their results and who know that there is not much chance of improvement without a fundamental understanding of poker odds, probabilities, and expectations. Pat Dittmar is head of trading and development at TradePointTechnologies.com, an organization that develops and deploys state-of-the-art proprietary trading technologies. Pat feels that successful poker players possess the skills required to play in the one true fast action, around the world, around the clock “Big Game” – the world financials markets, and TradePointTechnologies recruits its traders exclusively from the poker world.

Genres: Nonfiction

246 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Alexandra Chauran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've already recommended this book to one person. There was a gaping hole in my understanding of high school level probability math because I was willfully inattentive at that time. This book cleared everything up with exceedingly simple, step by step math. I enjoyed the soft cover edition, as opposed to the Kindle, because there was even colour coding for certain operations. Even though I was already using higher level math before reading this book, the basic fundamentals are like looking under the hood and understanding how it works on a deeper level. I feel better equipped to understand odds as expressed in ratios.

[James L · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book does what it says. Provides probabilities for every conceivable outcome in both Texas holdem and Omaha. Nothing more, nothing less. Do not expect a strategy book. The tables are a nice touch.

[Shiv Prakash · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Not very user-friendly or intuitive walk through. Just a crude, black and white dry layout of some Comb() equations.

[Trey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Other than a very few strategical nuggets, this book's title says it all. In Practical Poker Math, you get a heavy dose of the odds of receiving certain starting hands and the chances of improving those hands after the flop, turn, and river. Unfortunately, the book is very repetitive, and it reads like a math major's thesis instead of a useful poker guide. Even though the author encourages you to incorporate the odds of your bets and raises causing other players to fold into your total odds of winning a hand, you are not instructed on how to actually do that math, which would be useful information. If you are a math aficionado, you might be interested in seeing all the formulae used to get the odds for each of the hands, but a person looking for useful poker knowledge can skip to the "Consolidated Odds Tables."

[Sean Goh · Rating 3 out of 5]

What you see is what you get. Really just the math, laid out in clear easy to understand set/probability.

Bonus points for pointing out that a key strategy of poker is winning with both bad and good hands.

Think of bet sizing as finding the amount to either price in or price out your opponent.

Ace-rag is overplayed by beginning players.

A losing bet saved is the same as a bet won with regard to the impact on a player's bottom line. The same can be said of an opportunity of positive expectation passed.

[Tony · Rating 1 out of 5]

Everything you need to know about this book can be found on five consecutive pages, and in a bunch of other books on poker. If you buy those other books, you might even learn a thing or two about poker.

This book also leaves out basic and critical poker math concepts like multiplying the number of outs by two, expected value and stack to pot ratios.

Save your money, pick up something by Ken Warren, Ed Miller or Dan Harrington.

[Sanjiv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice easy primer to get you thinking about statistics in the context of poker