Poker Calculation vs. Intuition

Let me start this article with a question: do you know that you will lose almost 30% of the time when you play with A-K as a starting hand? Despite the fact that poker is about skills and play strategies, it is a game of chances and randomness as well. A recent study shows that there is nothing you can do to guarantee a win all the time — it is simply a matter of staying profitable over the course of poker sessions. Anything can happen at poker tables and you need to make sure you are doing your best to prevent bad things, such as bad beats and losing streaks, from happening to you.

Poker calculations — counting odds, pots weighing, measuring hand strengths, and many more — can help you play the game better from one point of view. You can make better, more logical, decisions whenever you play, thus resulting better profitability at the end of the day. Poker calculations can only be learned by doing, although you can simply play low-stake games or go to one of your favorite social networking site and play poker with no real money attached. By mastering the needed calculations, you can simply improve the overall playing experiences and make sure you are making good decisions all the time.

Still, counting your hands’ relative strength to the dot may not be enough because your opponent may get stronger hand on the river. As much as it hurts to lose to a Three of a Kind on the river, these things happen and you need to prepare yourself for it. Intuition is what you should need. Learn how to observe and understand your playing environment better, and in no time at all you will be able to read tells, predict your opponents’ move and the relative strengths of their hands, and play better poker in general.