Poker Math That Matters

Which Bucks?
There are four different ways we can look at results when we’re
at the poker table. We can look at real-bucks, Sklansky-bucks,
G-bucks and reciprocal-bucks.
Let's take an example where we have K♣K♥ preflop in a $5/$10
NLHE game. It folds to us on the button, and we raise to $35.
The big blind reraises to $100. We both started with $1,000
preflop. We reraise him to $280. He shoves. He’s a tighter
player, so we assume when he shoves, his range is JJ+ and AK.
We both flip our cards over, and he reveals AA. We’re crushed.
The board comes down Q♥2♠4♦6♣K♠. Our 18% equity comes
through, and we win the hand. Let's break down our results for
each of the bucks.
Real-bucks is simply what we won or lost in a given hand.
Examining the real-bucks is very simple here. We used to have
$1,000 in our stack, but now we have $2,000. We made $1,000
in the hand. Looking at real-bucks results in a hand is a terrible
way to examine your play. Sometimes we played horribly in a
hand, but still won. Sometimes we played brilliantly and still
lost. How did we play in this hand?
Sklansky-bucks is a term coined from a concept introduced by
author David Sklansky. Let's take a look at the Sklansky-bucks
as we examine our call preflop. When we had to put all our
money in, we had $720 left in our stack. The pot was $1280.
We were getting a little worse than 2:1 on our call, so we needed
to have about 36% to call. We had 18% equity when we called,
so the EV equation of our call could look like this.
0.18($1,280) + 0.82(-$720) = EV
$230.40 - $590.40 = (-$360)
89