Introduction to Probability with Texas Hold’em Examples

by Frederic Paik Schoenberg

Introduction to Probability with Texas Hold’em Examples illustrates both standard and advanced probability topics using the popular poker game of Texas Hold’em, rather than the typical balls in urns. The author uses students’ natural interest in poker to teach important concepts in probability. This classroom-tested book covers the main subjects of a standard undergraduate probability course, including basic probability rules, standard models for describing collections of data, and the laws of large numbers. It also discusses several more advanced topics, such as the ballot theorem, the arcsine law, and random walks, as well as some specialized poker issues, such as the quantification of luck and skill in Texas Hold’em. Homework problems are provided at the end of each chapter. The author includes examples of actual hands of Texas Hold’em from the World Series of Poker and other major tournaments and televised games. He also explains how to use R to simulate Texas Hold’em tournaments for student projects. R functions for running the tournaments are freely available from CRAN (in a package called holdem ). See Professor Schoenberg discuss the book.

199 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2011

Reviews

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the idea of teaching probability using Texas Hold'em examples and the book does a fantastic job of using only examples from real hands aired on TV. The author also does a great job selecting exercises to work on. While I like the brevity of the book, I think many concepts should be explained a bit further. The mathematics in the examples often seems aimed at more advanced students (which sort of conflicts with the idea of using examples which are more concrete and hence aimed at students that need not be as mathematically advanced). I am also not fan of the typesetting for many of the mathematical formulas. When the formulas are in a line of text, they don't look pretty.

Overall a pretty good textbook to complement a course, but it would be hard for me to pick this textbook as the sole textbook in a probability course.