Issue 015: Poker EV Made Simple - Stop Being Results-Oriented

This week’s newsletter contains:

As a subscriber to the newsletter, you’ll have access to our Preflop Flash Cards that test your knowledge of starting hand ranges! You can choose the position you want to study, work through a series of hands, and track your progress during the session.

So, if you’re trying to get more comfortable with which hands to play from each position, this is a great way to turn the concepts we discuss here into actual practice!

Expected Value, or EV, is a way to judge the quality of a poker decision without being fooled by the result of a single hand. Instead of asking, “Did I win?” EV asks, “If I could make this exact same decision over and over again, how much would I expect to win or lose on average?” A profitable decision can still lose in the short term, while a bad decision can sometimes win. That is why good poker requires us to focus on whether the decision was profitable, not whether the chips happen to come our way this time.

EV also helps us compare our available choices. Folding has an EV of zero from the moment we make the decision because we do not put any additional money into the pot. Money we have already invested is a sunk cost and should not influence what we do next. The goal is simply to choose the option with the highest EV. This also means that not every poker mistake deserves equal attention. A slightly incorrect decision might cost only a few dollars in EV, while regularly making large negative-EV calls, paying off opponents who rarely bluff, or making bad hero calls can cost far more. Improving efficiently means fixing the biggest leaks first.

The profitability of a decision also depends heavily on our opponent. A bluff may be profitable against someone who folds too often and terrible against someone who rarely folds, even when our cards, the board, and our bet size are identical. This is why poker decisions cannot be judged in isolation. EV incorporates how opponents are likely to respond and helps us identify when we should bluff more, when we should stop bluffing, and when we should simply value bet.

Finally, EV must be separated from variance. Variance explains why good decisions can lose repeatedly in the short run and bad decisions can sometimes produce winning sessions. EV measures the quality of the decision; variance determines the short-term result.

The simplest OMC shortcut is to ask: “If I could repeat this exact decision 1,000 times, would I want to?” If the answer is yes and the math supports it, the decision is probably profitable. The goal in poker is not to win every hand—it is to repeatedly make decisions that will make money over the long run.