Week 1

Chapter 1 - Decisions under Risk: Probability and Expectation

So, this is it. The first week of the study group. For this week I would like you to read Chapter 1 of the book. It is really a simple introduction to probabilities and in games of chance in general.

I have a couple of discussion points, please feel free to add to the discussion or keep the discussion going too, by replying to this post. Also, any questions you might have about Chapter 1 should be attached under "comments" in this post.

1. The authors say that right now the decision with highest expected value will be the best one. As in many things in life, making the most money now, is not necessarily the best for making the most money in the future. For example a company might increase their profits in the short term by dumping poison into some lake, but the negative PR that comes with that would greatly offset their short term gains. Is it not the same with poker? Don't you think just focusing on one hand is narrow-minded and will not yield you the highest expectation in the long run?
2. Do you think any game of chance with complete known information between two players is solvable?

I can't think of any more right now, so I'll leave it at that. Oh, a really nice website about probability and gambling is The wizard of odds. That guy goes deep in just about any gambling game and side bet there is.

Anyway, I warned you that this is not an easy book and there will be homework, so the first assignment is here. It is a PDF file, 20.5KB. Please send the completed homework to my e-mail address bellatrix78 at yahoo.com (replace the "at" with @). I don't care in which format you send it (Word, LaTeX or handwritten scanned), but please try to write out all formulas correctly with an editor (it gets really tedious looking at text formulae, e.g 10^5/2*3). I will go over any homework at any time, but if you want to keep up with the course, send it to me by Monday July 21st, which is when the next Chapter will be discussed and the next homework will be posted.

What is this page for?

Hello everybody!

I wanted to create this webpage as a sort of study group to go together through the book "Mathematics of Poker" by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman. By creating this study group, not only will I feel pressured to keep up with reading this book, but also the discussion will help everybody tackle the more difficult subjects in this book.

I have a strong mathematical background. My main problem with this book is laziness, I have no problem grasping the technicalities on this subject. So what does a professor usually do, if he/she wants to go into a new subject field? That's right, teach a course on that field. So that's what this study group is about. While it is a lot of discussions, I think there also should be assignments on different chapters. I will also try to present the further stuff on each chapter on this page, so that everybody can join into this discussion.

If you are only reading this after the study group has already started, that's ok. Submit your assignments and get on with the studying. You can always catch up or start new. This is an interesting matter and math is timeless. Sure, computing power gets better, but the techniques behind solving a problem mostly remain the same.

So the most important thing you need for this course is the book "Mathematics of Poker". I've attached a link through my Amazon affiliate page. If you could buy it under this link (The Mathematics of Poker), I would be very thankful. :)