Poker Math That Matters

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balanced poker every day of the week. And at the stakes most
players play, there is no shortage of bad players. Now, if you are
so bad at poker, you can’t exploit players at small stakes, you
need to know that you’ll not be able to play a balanced game of
poker. Understanding balanced poker and approaching
implementing it requires advanced understanding of the game.
By the time a struggling small-stakes player can begin
developing a balanced game, they’d be better off exploiting all
the bad players.
So, what value does balance have? Thinking about balanced
poker can help you grow in your poker theory and come up with
new ideas. Understanding balanced poker can help you think
about how to make adjustments to win an information battle.
And understanding balanced poker will help you out in situations
where you are simply forced to be sitting with players playing a
superior strategy to yours. As you reach higher limits where the
player pools are extremely small and the majority of players are
very tough, developing a well-balanced strategy can take on a lot
more importance. For most advanced players, however, much of
what can be accomplished in thinking about balanced poker
comes along intuitively. They can feel the spots that have
glaring holes in their strategy and can work to balance those if
they need to.
But, for mid-stakes players on down to micro-stakes players,
dedicating a lot of time developing balanced strategies is not the
most +EV way to spend their time. Having said that, I enjoy
thinking about balanced poker, and it certainly has its place in
poker discussions. However, when I hear a micro-stakes player
talking about not making a play because it’s unbalanced, I just
sigh a bit. Even if those players could manage to play a wellbalanced
game, the choice to play it instead of maximally