The Mathematics of Poker

[waffle]

Kudos to the excellent book. This is the best book on poker I have ever read.

[skillzilla]

i think i might get this for xmas :>

[uncleshady]

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Yeah since there are 382 pages not counting the roman numbered ones, I opened to 191. I see what you mean. But you aren't supposed to start reading from there. It's a little easier to start from page 1. The goal was to make the book understandable for different levels of math sophistication--I think understanding the conclusions is possible without understanding the derivation of the results, though I imagine there are lots of participants on this forum who will keep us honest on our math.

To be honest, there is some minimum math requirement, just as there is some minimum poker knowledge. If you don't know what a check-raise is, I would recommend reading something else and playing a little first. Similarly, familiarity with Algebra is a minimum. If you see "w = 3xy + 2" and don't know that it means the value of w is three times x times y plus 2 or see how that simplifies to "w - 2 = 3xy" then you may not get far with the book.

This is unfortunate as this does exclude a large portion of the population, I suspect even a large portion of the poker playing population. I feel pretty bad about this, but we can't put all prequisite material or the book will be several thousand pages long.

For the rest who meet these requirements we do feel you will understand most of the book if we have done our job well--in fact this is a good test for us as authors.

Bill

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Thanks for the reply. Although I made kind of a half-assed comment about it, you replied professionally. I will recommend this book to friends because you seem to care about your customer base.

[donger]

Hey, I'm not sure if this is errata or user-error, but I've been plodding through this book, stopping to make sure I understand each equation and application fully. On page 26, they plug their example game into equation 2.4 to figure the standard deviation for the variance (2.61)

the equation is something like:

STDEV = 2.61 * SQRT 100

and they end up with an answer of 36.89. How? Isn't SQRT(100) = 10? so 2.61 * 10 = 26.1?

Note: I have a BA and clepped out of all my college math, so be gentle if this is a dumb question.

[BillChen]

Yep it's in the list of errors, it seems you are getting the material.

Bill Chen

[Jerrod Ankenman]

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Hey, I'm not sure if this is errata or user-error, but I've been plodding through this book, stopping to make sure I understand each equation and application fully. On page 26, they plug their example game into equation 2.4 to figure the standard deviation for the variance (2.61)

the equation is something like:

STDEV = 2.61 * SQRT 100

and they end up with an answer of 36.89. How? Isn't SQRT(100) = 10? so 2.61 * 10 = 26.1?

Note: I have a BA and clepped out of all my college math, so be gentle if this is a dumb question.

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Yes, this equation should say sqrt(200) instead of 100. This and other errata can be found at:

http://www.conjelco.com/mathofpoker/...ker-errata.pdf

It's really really hard to find all the small errors in a book like this; we had several people all reading the book looking for this type of stuff, but things do slip through the cracks. In future printings the errors that we (or you!) find will be corrected.

[mattnxtc]

I ordered the book today off amazon...if after 300+ pages you only have around 10 corrections that need to be made, then i am quite excited

[Jim C]

I realize this is a week late, but the best calculator ever made is the Hewlett-Packard HP48GX or the older but basically the same HP48SX. You can get these off of ebay. They will last forever. There is pretty much no reason to have any other calculator for serious math.

You can get a Palm Pilot emulator for these machines for free on the web. My Treo 650 emulating my HP48SX is faster than the calculator is.

If you want to do real math on a computer, get yourself a copy of Mathematica or Maple, both of which do symbolic math. I prefer Mathematica. If you are a student, you can get a copy of this for only a hundred bucks. Pretty much a no-brainer for anyone who wants to do sophisticated math in any subject (or even unsophisticated but tedious symbolic math).

FWIW,

Jim

[MFM00]

Figure 15.1 pg 163 is inconsistent with the following text on the next page,i.e. the graph does not show that f(x) is maximized at x=1 for P>2.

I calculate that at P=3 alpha = 1/2 and f(x) = 0 at x= 0 and f(x) = 1/12 at x=1 which looks like the P=1 line on the graph as printed, so the legend may be inverted, but I haven't checked each value of P.

[groosman]

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Bill,

Seeing as your a Pokerstars sponsored player any chance of you pushing them to put into the VIP store?

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Again: could you please answer this question?
Also when will there be a 2nd edition?