Now I would like to talk about the difference between winning money and earning money when playing poker. This is a very important concept for the serious player because it helps you analyze your play more effectively.
Let’s start with an example hand. You make a flush draw on the flop and there are several people in the hand. You call a single bet to see the turn, and then call another single bet to see the river. Let’s say the pot and bets after the turn total $100, and you had to call only $10 to see the river. Sure enough, the river produces that magical third spade, and your nuts flush wins a $130 pot when one player calls your bet on the end. Because you put in thirty of those dollars, you won $100 on that hand. But how much did you earn?
The amount that you earned is the amount you would expect to win per hand over a long period of time in the exact same situation. In the example hand, you earned about $10 on the play, here’s why: You were being laid 10:1 on your call going into the river, but you were only a 4:1 dog to make your draw. Since you had a 20% chance of winning the pot, $20 of the $100 were yours. It cost you only $10 to “buy” your portion of the pot, and you netted $10 in profit. In fact, your actual earnings are a little higher than $10 due to the implied odds of the betting on the river; in this case you won $10 extra from your opponent, which brings your earnings up to around $12 for the hand.
Here’s Another Way Of Thinking About It
If you ran that example going into the river 100 times, you would lose your $10 call about 80 times, which is a total loss $800. You will win the whole pot about 20 times, which totals at $2000. ($2000 - $800) / 100 = $12. Of course this means that every time you play the pot this way you expect to earn $12 (this is called expected value, a concept discussed at length by Sklansky in his writing).
Here is the point of this segment: if you get lucky and win three pots in a row when you made a hand you were correctly calling to draw to, it looks as if you have earned a lot more than you really have. And when you get outdrawn three times in a row by an opponent who was incorrectly drawing, it looks like you’ve lost a lot, but you actually earned money on those hands! You just won’t see that money until you a play a few more top sets against a weak opponent with a gut-shot straight draw. The math doesn’t lie, and it’s what separates a top notch poker player from the typical weekend player.
In conclusion, when you have just finished a great winning session, keep in mind that there is a good chance that you were lucky to win as much as you did. Conversely, when you finish a massive losing session, reflect on the hands that you lost and estimate how much you would have won if you had played the same scenario 100 times over. By keeping this factor in mind, you can become much more effective at evaluating you play, and you also will find that it helps you to cope psychologically with your losing sessions. If you are playing correctly, you will find that you earn money every time you play, whether you actually win any or not : )
