EV (expected value)

EV is an abbreviation for expected value. Regardless if you play poker, black jack or on horses you will always have an expected value for the outcome of your play. The most people who plays poker or doing others sorts of gambling doesn’t usually know exactly the conditions for the game they play.

When you play on lottery to know about the exactly relations about EV isn’t very important. Here it’s more about having a chance on the jackpot and not so much getting a steady income by winning many small amounts – like a steady income on lottery was possibly!

In poker on the other hand the situation is more dynamic. Here all decisions you take will affect your result in some kind of way. And opposite to lottery, here you can actually achieve a positive expected value. Not being aware of what your EV is in a particular situation is therefore a serious risk factor concerning your total result.

There is positive and negative EV and in some situations a neutral EV can of course exist. With positive EV means that you can expect a positive result in a given situation and with negative EV it is the opposite way around. As a consequence of this you want to bet as much as possible when you have a positive expectation and as little as possible when you have a negative expectation. Your guidance to this cause is odds. Within every situation in poker there are odds of the possible outcomes. The more you know about the odds the more times can you get yourself a positive EV.

Let’s look at an example that show what EV is about... You got a bet on rolling a dice: if you bet $1 you will win $4 on the numbers 1 and 2. If we make a calculating of this we can see that you win $1.33 on every dollar you bet. (2 numbers will come up 1/3 of the times and when it will be worth $4, 0.33*4=1.33.) Here we can see that you have a positive expected value and you will earn money in the long run on this bet.

In poker things will not be as simple as in this example. Poker is a game of imperfect information and you cannot calculate what you don’t know. But if you have lots of knowledge and experience you will be able to make estimations that serve your calculations. Poker isn’t about to be sure but to make correct analysis.

You will with all certainly win in the long run in the situations where you have a positive EV in poker and in short terms, you will maybe win. This is easy to formulate in words, but much more difficult to make practice of in reality. This is because poker just doesn’t consist of mathematics and strategically elements but also of lots of psychology. 

The EV perspective is the right way to approach gambling, including poker. Try to always think: "Do I have a positive EV or not?" and play only when you do have it. It can be applied on everything from table selection to a single call desiscion. In abstract terms EV is everything in poker.