How to Do EV Calculations

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In the poker it is generally considered to be advantageous if the player could know beforehand which hand is going to be positive and which hand is negative in terms of the money. This is easy with the help of the expected value calculations. These calculations have to be done on very large databases and they help the player to know that which bet and which call is going to be beneficial for him and would help him to extract more money. In poker whenever there is a random deal then there is surely going to be a hand which can fetch a large amount of money. Expected value calculations help in counter balancing these chance factors.

Expected value calculations are done over different playing styles for the different players. It is mainly used while playing the heads up poker game so that it can be easily assessed that the starting hand of the game is going to be a positive hand or the negative hand. This then helps the player to decide his further moves for the game.  

How to calculate

The expected value calculations works together with the pot odds and the implied odds that are used to estimate the money that can be won in the future bets. There are many hands that could give you the positive expectations against the well skilled opponent. For example: all the Pairs of hands from AA to 44 are surely going to be the positive hands. Besides this, there are many off the suit hands that must contain atleast a single ace with them and the other cards can be from A to 7. If the off the suit hands are containing all the kings then this is also going to be very strong and positive hand. After that if you have the suited hands containing an ace then that hand also can fetch you a good deal. At last, the combinations of the queen with jacks and the 10’s are sometimes very beneficial in the game.

You have to make a good combination of the bluff and your winning chance to get a positive hand. Expected value works well when the folding off your opponent gets combined with your winning. It is very easy to learn how to calculate the expected value. It’s easy to understand this with the help of the example given below:

Suppose that your opponent bets $5 in the pot which already contains $20. This is done after he gets the turn in the match of the heads up poker that is going.  Now, assume that you have 2 hearts with you and the remaining are 2 are placed on the board. It is very obvious that you will expect your opponent to have a pair and therefore you will think if you will make your flush then you will win the hand. Now here comes the part of the expected value.

The expected value

Here you will call $5 if you want to win $25 that is kept inside the pot. So, now your pot odds become 5/1. In this case your chances of making the flush are 4/1. Now, if you take the 5/1 odds on the 4/1 chance you will see that there is a positive expectation. So, this will bring you the profit. Notice that, here you have calculated the EV as a simple fraction of the $5 bet that was made by you.  Now, here if you will also consider the implied odds then you can have even more profit. This is because now you will be able to further describe all the future bets that can be won by you if you make the hand.  

Besides this, you can also perform expected value calculations while you are semi bluffing with the help of a flush draw. However keep in mind that this kind of calculation is even more complex and very difficult. This is because here the player needs to factor out 3 more outcomes. Here you need to consider all the three cases that the opponent has folded, he has made the call and you have won, and he has made the call but still you have lost.

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