My wife is taking classes at Columbia this fall and I will be dropping in some classes to further my studies in life and poker.

Any recommendations? Math classes (probability) and game theory for one. And she's going to Teachers College, so I will try to pick up some educational methods and apply them to poker. My degree is in Educational Psychology and I have a college level science from high school (over 17 college credits). In college, I took only pysch and evolution courses that were more humanities courses than science.

I need some specific things to look for in the course catalog. I figure next time I see Chris Ferguson on the circuit (not at WSOP) I can quickly ask him or email him but thought I would try here... er since... you're all academics at the highest level.

I think you will be dissapointed if you take a game theory class to further your poker skills. Most of the time in class will be spent on formal definitions of equilibria, existence proofs, and technical stuff.

I guess a statistics course would be useful, although you probably understand the relevant concepts like calculating expected value and conditional expectations since you've played poker for a while.

Maybe an accounting course or some other business course would be most practical since you plan on going pro. You could learn how to pay the least taxes on your income. :wink:

I strongly disagree with what your think my education is meant to do. Thanks for your advice, but I'm going to disregard it.

I will not be taking a statistics course. I have enough business experience to manage my ledgers and Columbia really doesn't teach that kind of stuff.

I am set on taking a Game Theory course. I'm hoping to become knowledgable in the subject for not just poker reasons. But, I don't understand how it cannot help me better understand the game, when game theorists like Ferguson are doing so well and yet I truly understand so little of what he says.

My game is not a Game theorist style... but I've got to study everything. And that stuff ihas been interesting to me so far. I'll give an example next...

i'm taking a stat class for the summer... haha its a jopke, we had 90 minutes for our test, I was out in 12 as the first person out. Poker helped me with that, instead of that helping me with poker

Exactly.

btw, here's an example I promised.

Sorry dude. Maybe you'd get better advice if you paid for it.

Anyway. I don't have any problem with you taking a game theory course if you are interested in it. I just wanted to give a fair warning that it wouldn't be the best class for poker players to take.

Most sucessful poker players aren't game theorists. They may have an intuitive understanding of some game theoretic concepts, but my point was that learning how to use fixed point theorems isn't necessary to play good poker. Important concepts like solving a game through backward induction can be picked up rather quickly.

And by the way, by a statistics course, I meant a statistics course in the math department. This is the same thing as a course in probability, which you mentioned in your first post.

I have read a lot about game theory, and queried some pro's on the subject of it's usefullness. The response's were that it would help, providing that I had a firm grasp on the (poker) game that I was learning, which I do not feel that I do yet. I am trying to learn pot equity and pot odds before I go much further with it. Some said they paid no attention to it, but nobody outright disregarded it as a tool. Good luck with it.

Probably not. It matters in who you ask. The key is to find lots of sources and then discern who has the right answers. We can have a $20 sidebet to see if the crew here can give me the same info as an educational specialist or more reliably a poker pro with academic experience.

Many consultants or experts are idiots. A few are good. Just like with every field.

For the record I will be contacting a few professionals in this field. And will pay them for their services.

What type of stats class did you take? It sounds like you took one of the introductory level classes. If thats the case, then you right. I was a TA for one of those classes when I was in college. It would be pretty easy for anyone who a basic understanding of the odds in poker. You really need to take classes in the higher levels, even then you wont get what you need from one class. It's going to take a while to get to level to where its really going to capture you interest.

BTW, those type of math classes will for the most part cover a lot of theoretical stuff. If you have a good prof, he should be including some applications as well. My best memories of statistics in school was not my math classes (although I thought the Chaos course was interesting). I like the applied stuff more. I found that in my quantum course, and also my computational fluid dynamics courses during my aerospace education. Try taking a look at some Applied Math or Computational Math courses as they will probably have more of what interest you.