What Is Positive Expectation?

  • April 10

If you’re losing when you gamble, the good news is that you can learn precisely what positive expectation is and how to use it.

Positive expectation can be hard to understand.n a few areas, it’s straightforward, but in other areas, you’re working with a limited number of facts.

Your expectation is how much you can expect to lose or win in any gambling situation. When you can mathematically expect to win, you have a positive expectation. When you mathematically can expect to lose, you have a negative expectation.

The majority of gamblers never make wagers with a positive expectation, which is why most gamblers lose. Gamblers who win consistently make more wagers with a positive expectation than bets with a negative expectation.

The best way to get an understanding of how positive expectation works is to use an example.

You can use positive expectation when you play poker. And it’s best to use positive expectation for every decision you make when playing poker.

Poker players have to make a lot of decisions. 

With so many decisions that you need to make, it’s easy to make mistakes. It also makes it challenging to determine if you have a positive or negative expectation in some situations.

All you can do is use the information that you have available, math, and experience. The truth is that sometimes you will make a mistake when you try to determine your expectation. But you’re going to get better at it as you gain experience. But you’re not going to get better if you don’t think about it and start using it.

Sports gamblers create positive expectations differently from poker players, but it’s still an important concept to understand. Sports bettors create positive expectations by handicapping sports contests and finding betting lines that give them value.

You can also increase your expectation by paying lower vig or finding opportunities where you can place bets that have no vig.

Betting on sporting events is a long-term gamble. You win or lose a single game at a time, but in the long run, you make a profit or loss based on every game on which you bet.

Blackjack players can create positive expectations by using card counting. Blackjack gamblers who don’t use card counting always gamble with a negative expectation, so they lose in the long run.

When you count cards in blackjack, you don’t play with a positive expectation on every hand, but you put more money in play with a positive expectation than you put into play with a negative expectation. So, in the long run, this gives you a profit.

You work with a slight edge when you count cards, usually between 5% and 1%. While this doesn’t sound like much, over time, this can be a lot of profit.

It’s also important to understand that you need to identify and avoid gambling situations with negative expectations. Winning gamblers maximize the number of positive expectation situations and minimize their negative expectation situations.

Tag: Useful