Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman The Mathematics of Poker

Edjon

Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman are two professional poker players with a mathematical background. Bill Chen has earned a PhD in Mathematics at the prestigious University of California in Berkeley and Ankenman has a BS in Business Management. Both authors play poker professionally, though Bill Chen is a more familiar face for many, as he has won 2 WSOP bracelets and once starred in High Stakes Poker.

Structure The Mathematics of Poker

The authors divided this book in 5 main parts. In the first part they discuss the basics of poker math and statistics, after which they discuss optimal play and exploitive play. In Part 4, the topic of risk is covered, for example risk in relation to your bankroll. The authors conclude with a few remaining issues such as tournament poker.

Writing style Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman

The authors use frequently math equations and graphs in their discussions and therefore I got the feeling I was reading my old high school mathematics instruction book.  

Opinion The Mathematics of Poker

The goal of Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman is to approach and and if possible to revsolve poker problems from a mathematical point of view. The authors often use simpler games (e.g. toy games) to resolve problems and relate these solutions to poker. This leads sometimes to very interesting and even surprising results (e.g. on bluff ratios). On the other side poker is a game, which is too complicated to solve mathematically and therefore the results in this book serve mostly as a guide for poker strategy and not as a direct solution for playing optimal poker.

The authors try to keep the applied mathematics at such a level that it is still comprehensible for a large audience. I myself have followed some statistics during my studies, but for me this book was nevertheless a struggle to get through. I had to read many mathematical proofs several times to understand them and I also regularly skipped these and went straight to the conclusion.

This book approaches poker from a mathematical point of view and at this point the authors have succeeded well. I however fear that the average poker player will have too much trouble with the used math, and therefore this book is not suitable for this group. This book is more for mathematicians with poker as their hobby than for the average poker player.

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