Expected Value in Poker

The poker lingo can be akin to speaking Swahili, that’s if you don’t live in a place where they speak Swahili! One term that is used more than most is EV – or Expected Value – and here is a quick definition of what the term means when relating to poker.



Your EV is the representation of how many chips you expect to win or lose, on average, for a single play. The calculation is derived from all of the potential scenarios that exist and how much you could expect to win or lose from each of them weighted by their probability of occurrence.



Now that’s a meaty statement designed to get the brain working. An easy way of looking at EV is to think of the roll of a die.



Imagine, you are at a casino and there is a single die game that offers you $10 if you can roll a four and a loss of $5 if you don’t. What is your EV in this game?



You can break the bet down by stating that there are only two possible outcomes. Either the die lands on four or it lands on a different number. Your die will land on four one time in six, and when it does so you receive a $10 reward. But the die will land on a different number five times out of six and each time you lose $5.



So, the maths is 1/6*$10+5/6*-5 = 3. So, you stand to lose $3 on this bet and therefore it should be avoided.



Read more about poker strategy on the Betfair website, or jump in at the deep end by playing five card draw: