The problem with ev of course, is that when we have blah blah in x position, and villain calls from wherever with whatever, we don't have time to open up poker stove, enter our hand, enter his range, work out equity, decide accordingly. This is where practice comes in. When we're not playing poker, when we're studying, we should play about with poker stove to see how certain hands match up against certain ranges. Some are obvious... if we have KK, and we know our opponent only 4bets us with QQ+, we should be able to quickly figure out that our equity is 50-50, that is, the probability of him having a better hand than us is the same as him having a worse hand, and when he has a worse hand, he's equally as dominated as we are when he has better hand. If we can add AK to his range, then this increases our equity, because it's a hand that is dominated by us. But say he's an uber-nit who only ever 4bets with KK/AA, suddenly our equity is very poor.

Very few ranges are this easy to work out, the majority of the time we have a board to consider too. KK vs a range of QQ+ is not 50-50 on a flop of Q63.

I try to explain ev to my friend by using dice as an example. I propose a game where we roll a dice, and he gives me £1 if it rolls a 1, 2, 3 or 4, and I give him £1.50 if it's a 5 or 6. He has a think about it and then declines. Why, I ask him? Because the odds are stacked against me, he says. I'll win £3 every 6 rolls, you win £4. And this, I tell him, is why he should fold when you are not in the lead unless the bet size is favourable in relation to the size of the pot we can win.

I tell him what about if I give you £2.50 when you hit your 5 or 6, and you still give me £1 when it's a 1, 2, 3 or 4... well, now I'll go for it, he says, because although the odds are stacked against me still, the prize for hitting makes up for the losses.

I think we're getting somewhere...

Of course, this is very good at demonstrating equity when we're behind and chasing the nuts, but not so good for when we have tens on a Jxx flop. I'll save that lesson until I understand!

I still have a great deal to learn about ev, but I am fortunate that maths comes fairly natural to me, so while I doubt I'm accurate in determining my equity against a range, I'm reasonably good at estimating, probability is something I understand. So while I've got work to do, I can still apply my estimates and be more accurate than most at my level.