EV, or expected value, is a term used in poker to refer to the potential outcomes of a hand.
If you were to play a certain hand endlessly, what would you expect the result to be? To clarify this idea and make it easy to understand, try flipping a coin. When you flip a coin, there is a 50% chance that it will land on heads and a 50% chance that it will land on tails. If you and a friend decide to start betting on a coin toss, since the coin will land on both sides half of the time, you both expect to win 50% of the time. Since you are both going to win as often as you lose, the expected value ( EV ) of the bet is $0.
You are expected to just break even if you flip a coin endlessly. EV becomes important in understanding whether a bet is good or bad. In the coin toss example above, if your friend bet $1 every time you win, but you lose $2 every time you lose, EV can be used to show why this is a bad bet. On average, every 2 flips will have 1 head (you win $1) and 1 tail (you lose $2), resulting in a net loss of $1 every 2 flips. From this you can know that your EV is -$0.50 or a loss of $0.50 per flip.
You are expected to just break even if you flip a coin endlessly. EV becomes important in understanding whether a bet is good or bad. In the coin toss example above, if your friend bet $1 every time you win, but you lose $2 every time you lose, EV can be used to show why this is a bad bet. On average, every 2 flips will have 1 head (you win $1) and 1 tail (you lose $2), resulting in a net loss of $1 every 2 flips. From this, you can know that your EV is -$0.50 or a loss of $0.50 per flip.
Obviously, having Aces or Kings will make you happy. Naturally, you want to play a big pot and win as much as possible, but how should you play that hand? What to do in this case? A common strategy is to bet your hand, raise against the bet, or even go all-in against re-raises since either hand is strong enough to go all-in preflop.
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As an example, let’s say you and your opponent each have $50 in your respective stacks and move all-in preflop with higher hands. This creates a total pot of $100. We know that our Aces win 81% of the time and lose 19% of the time. This means our EV for this hand is $81 – we will win the $100 pot 81% of the time. Remember that your expected value is simply your odds of winning multiplied by your current pot.
