Poker at Berkeley

Welcome to the Poker Decal!

Applications for the spring 2025 poker decal are currently open. If you are currently enrolled in the course, you can find all course information below.

If you want to learn more, you can find course material below, or check out our resources page.

Syllabus

Week #	Lecture Topics	Assignments (due at the beginning of the next class)
Week 1: Introduction to Poker	Course Expectations, Rules of the game, Expected Value, Defining GTO play, Variance	Homework 1: Rules of Poker Reading: Brokos Ch. 1/2
Week 2: Preflop introduction	Open raising, Defending the Big Blind, Hand Ranges, Counting Hand Combinations, Relative vs. Absolute Hand Strength	Homework 2: Open Raising
Week 3: Advanced Preflop Actions	3-betting, 4-betting, Flatting an open, Squeezing, Preflop Exploits	Homework 3: Advanced Preflop situations
Week 4: Flop Introduction	Made vs. Drawing hands, Board Texture, Range Advantage, Calculating Odds	Homework 4: Pot odds calculation practice
Week 5: Betting on the Flop	The Continuation Bet, Sizing, Pot Control, Position, Raising on flop	Homework 5: C-betting and sizing
Week 6: The Turn	Following Betting Patterns on the Flop, Overbets, Probing the Turn	Homework 6: The Turn
Week 7: Spring Break	Enjoy Your Break!!!	No Homework!
Week 8: The River	Alpha and Minimum Defense Frequency, Bluffing the River, Sizing Bets, Showdown Rules	Homework 7: The River
Week 9: Introduction to Hand Analysis	Following Decisions on Each Street, Information Gained, Adjusting Ranges	Homework 8: Practicing Hand Analysis
Week 10: Common Lines	Turn Action Following x-x Flop, Double Check-Raising, When to Give Up on the River	Homework 9: Common Lines
Week 11: Exploits vs. GTO play	How to Adjust to Strange Lines, Player Types, and Environments. Emphasis on Strategy Changes in Live Poker, The Rake, Nodelocking	Homework 10: Exploits
Week 12: Practice Session	Practicing lines, Playing optimally, Adjusting to Players	Final Project

This syllabus is subject to change as the semester progresses.

Course Information

Disclaimer

At no point during this course will you wager real money. We understand that betting is a sensitive topic for some and you might have issues with the ethical implications, please let us know. We will be focusing on the probability and statistics behind betting.

Course Objectives

1) Understanding the rules of poker
2) Understand basic and advanced poker concepts
3) Be able to use an understanding of poker strategy to play a fundamentally sound game
4) Be comfortable thinking about hands using correct logic, being able to apply that logic more generally to other games and circumstances.

Assignments and Grades

Lecture Attendance (30%)

The concepts covered in this course are cumulative, so missing a lecture creates a chance to fall behind. While slide decks will be made public, there is no guarantee of course capture so attending class is the best way to learn the material. Active participation is encouraged, and students always have the opportunity to ask questions during the lecture.

Attendance will be taken at the end of each class.

Please let an Instructor know before the beginning of class if you will be absent.

After 2 unexcused absences, each absence will result in a 3% penalty to the total grade.

Playing Session Attendance (10%)

The second part of the lecture will involve short sessions to practice concepts using play money. There is no punishment for poor performance in the playing sessions, as the goal is simply improvement. These will be tracked by participation in the playing session’s medium (Likely PokerNow)

The first 2 playing session absences will be automatically excused.

Each session beyond that will result in a 0.5% penalty to the final grade.

Homework (40%)

Homework is given on a weekly basis, created upon the material covered in the previous week. Homework will be assigned on Monday after the first lecture and due the following Monday.

Graded based on completeness, difficult questions will be reviewed during the next lecture

Solutions provided and explained online after the due date

Can be submitted up to 1 week late for half credit

Final Project (20%)

The final project in this course will be a hand analysis of 3 hands the student has played during practice sessions, covering their reasoning on each street given the strength of their own hand against their opponent’s perceived range. This will be grade by effort and general thought process rather than perfect accuracy.

Final Grade

An overall percentage of 70% or higher will Pass. In other words, if one puts effort into the course they will pass. If you need accommodations or have any extenuating circumstances, please reach out to the course staff. We promise to be reasonable and do not want grades to be a concern for any student engaging with the course.

Course Description

Introduction to Poker will introduce concepts of Statistics and game theory to students through the game of poker. Each week, students will focus on a different topic related to poker, spending time learning each street in a hand and developing heuristics they can use to generalize the theory they learned.

After learning the information associated with preflop play, the flop, the turn, and the river, we will take a general look at the game and apply the information learned to specific hands or examples to teach a very specific concept, known as toy games.

Knowledge of poker is an important skill to develop problem solving ability, take a hands-on approach to statistics, and is a common test for students interested in quantitative finance or related fields.

Lecture Activities

Each class is split into two parts: an approximately 90 minute lecture on topics or concepts surrounding poker theory, and an approximately half-an-hour long playing session, where students will have the opportunity to put these new skills to practice using play money.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course, and prior understanding of poker is neither required nor assumed. However, we are looking at situations and general poker theory from a statistical perspective, so having taken an introductory statistics course would provide some students a deeper understanding.

Learning Outcomes

Understand how decisions are made to produce a ‘best result’

Be comfortable with the rules of poker and general etiquette

Apply strategies learned throughout the course to the player's own hands in playing sessions or outside of lecture

Use basic statistical processes to evaluate the risk and reward of any situation

Resources

You can find more resources for learning about poker on the resources page of the Poker at Berkeley website.

Lecturers

Welford Chen

welfordc@berkeley.edu

Jones Dickerson

jones.dickerson@berkeley.edu

Maysa Barandish

maysabarandish@berkeley.edu

Mete Ehliz

meteehliz@berkeley.edu