think about it this way - john beck

john beck sent this to me:

I like thinking about cards this way it keeps me very grounded. For every hand you play you either have the nuts or you don’t. When you have the nuts it’s easy. When you don’t you need to figure out what the odds are that you’ll improve your hand. Then you need to figure out what the odds are that even if you improve your hand you won’t have the best hand (this is just an estimated guess on your part) then you need to figure out whether make the call or raise will pay off enough times to make your expected win rate positive and not negative. So if you have a flush draw on the flop you have 9 outs to your flush. You need to discount cards that would give your opponent a full house etc. Say the odds minus those “discounted” outs is 7 to 1 that you’ll improve your hand and win. That means out of eight times having this situation you will lose 7 times and win once. You have to make sure that you’re getting paid more than 7 times what you’re betting etc. You know all this I’m sorry. I love this example though:

The odds of a coin landing heads or tails is 1:1 50/50 right? Well say someone told you that they would take tails and you would take heads but they would pay you $2 for every heads and you only have to pay them $1 for every tails. Since the odds are 1:1 and you’re getting paid 2 to 1 for every 2 times the coin is flipped you can expect to lose $1 once and win $2 once for a profit of $1 every 2 flips. So even if you flip the coin 50 times and it’s tails every time and you’re down $50 your expected win rate is still the same so even though you’re losing you’re actually winning by making the right bet. As you approach infinity everything always evens out and you will end up with the money.