I suggested teaching a poker class at the community college I work at. Initially, I called the class "Playing Poker for Fun." The idea behind the class is to teach poker to people that feel too intimidated to play in the weekly home games they have access to. I would cover the absolute basics all the way up to hand rankings if necessary.

The College teaches a variety of self enrichment classes and I suggested teaching this one. I was amazed to get a positive response. I really want to make the most out of this opportunity. So I'm asking for your help.

What do you think I should include in this class? I know it's a wide open question, but I want to consider many ideas.

Wow, what a wide open topic. I'm going to ramble for a bit.

I suppose you have to start with history fundamentals. Poker came into popularity at the turn of the last century, now we've got 52-cards, and three of a kind beats two pair.

This is how a poker table works. This is a dealer. This is a button. This is what happens when you don't have a dealer. This is how you buy chips. This is how you buy more chips. This is how you get on the board for a table. This is what chips ARE! We used to use white/blue/red bicycle chips, but now we don't and here's why. This is how you leave a table. This is the etiquette for tipping, ordering and eating food, and when you have to call the floor person.

And then, you teach an abridged version of the Hellmuth book. Hand values, absolute position, relative position, outs and direct odds, implied odds, managing pot sizes, ranges, tells, and the Tao of Poker.

If I had 2-3 hours, I'd start writing my syllabus. I envy you.

Thank you for the response. It's the type of response I'm after.

I would talk a little about levels, perhaps near the end of the class.

I would also focus on Holdem. If you cover everything you want about that, you could add a class on Omaha.

But focusing on Holdem and the various aspects of poker in general will prevent confusion and overload.

That's a good point. I don't want to leave them more confused than when they came.

While you're teaching Hold'em fundamentals, make sure you point out the quirks that are unique to community card games, namely counterfeiting. Show them what can happen to K3 on a K73 board when the turn is a 7. Show them how much it sucks to have 55 when the board reads 66899.

Other things you might want to cover: string bets (what they are, why we don't like them), the oversized-chip rule, and etiquette in the blinds (always chop or never chop).

Another idea: at the end of the term, maybe you could put on a free tournament for the class, and see if you can get the school to give out some small prizes to the top finishers.

Prob one of the biggest take away messages toward the end is that the longterm winners in the game consistently make +ev decisions.

Taking time to discuss what ev means might be beneficial since it essentially applies to all the decisions we make in life, not just in poker

Another point: you are going to make mistakes. Even the best players make mistakes. Playing well is making fewer mistakes than your opponents, as well as minimizing the costs of your mistakes, and maximizing the costs of your opponent's mistakes.

Counting the true number of outs you might have, and what their value is.

For example, if you have suited hole cards and only one card on the flop matches that suit, it has little value, maybe worth one out. But if you have other draws, giving you the odds to call a flop bet, and another card of that suit comes on the turn, you have a very favorable situation. Not only do your outs increase, but your flush draw is much more camouflaged.

Same with gut shot or double gut shot straight draws.

Some people have an aversion to math. They might prefer to memorize the relatively few numbers they need to determine whether they have the odds to draw to a hand.

http://www.pokerology.com/charts/poker-drawing-odds.pdf

This chart is waaay more than novices need. Just knowing the pot odds needed to draw to the next street is enough. And once you get past 15 outs, you almost always have the odds to call, in most games. So about a 1/4 of these numbers, with just one column of odds would be sufficient. I'm just too lazy to try to paste it here.

You would be amazed by how much you can ramble on about a full ring hold'em hand with all the hole cards exposed.

Also, you can get into pot odds and stuff like that without going into grad level stats classes. Start with, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward needs to be, then go down as far down as their math level can go.

I would start with the hand ranks and basic card numbers and then go into hold'em. Hold'em is the most popular and (especially limit) has a lot less decisions and stuff to remember than other games.

That is a great idea. I would take at least part of one class to deal 6-9 hands face up and discuss each hand as far as strength, position and approach. Put yourself in each seat and play it the best you can without being influenced by knowing the other hands. Let only the previous action influence how the subsequent hands should be played.

These are all great ideas! I love the free tournament idea. It all depends on how this class is going to be structured. We are still in the planning phase, but I'm going to lobby for an extended class. It is truly going to depend on what these students know and how much they want to learn.

I will periodically update this thread of my progress with this class. Please don't stop with the ideas! They have been quite helpful so far.

when I teach my poker class, one of the first lessons is "poker is a game where people who do math well get paid cash money by people who can't do math."

I actually do have a fantasy of teaching poker to high school kids for math credit. The complaints most students have about math are obliterated for poker. "how would I ever use this stuff in real life?" Here you go kid, best math performance wins the most money. "it's so abstract with all those numbers and weird symbols". Actually, abstract symbols are not math, they're just ways to DESCRIBE math. And sure, they work best for math geeks because of the way math geek brains work. Good news, we'll be using chips and cards instead of greek letters, mostly.

Poker without math is like fishing without water. I think the best use of a poker class is to teach people how to use a mathematical approach to problem solving. As SuqAta8 points out, the ability to use abstract thinking to make decisions takes you way, way farther than a good time with your buddies.

Yeah yeah you're right but still.

What are the students who have math phobia supposed to do, get up and walk out of the class? They want to play poker, too.

And seriously, how much math do we "do" in poker? I get a kick out of articles on pot odds that include algebraic formulas. It is one way to explain it, but not the only one. And who solves formulas at the table? Anyone who does, does not understand the math behind it very well. He is following an elaborate recipe.

To play poker correctly at a decent level, you have to understand the mathematical principles involved, and you have to be able to estimate the pot and your opponents stacks. You have to know the approximate numbers in that chart. Or even simpler, you know about how much you should bet or how much you can call in relation to the pot size, given a variety of situations that you've seen a thousand times. Like, "I have two pair on the flop, but there's a flush draw. I'd better bet more than half pot."

Okay, so I glossed over understanding the mathematical principles, but I did so for a reason. Math concepts are not an easy thing for the math adverse.

I think I would not mention the word "math" in the class. You can explain the concepts situationally, and never use an "X" or a formula. I would not skimp on explanations and examples, but I would also not frame it with mathematics.

This reminds me of a microeconomics 101 course I took eons ago. The professor would spend the entire class explaining a concept, with elaborate diagrams, then in the last two minutes he'd say, "And for those who know calculus, here's the differential equation." And boom, there was the entire class content in that formula. Elegant and perfect. But for those who didn't know calculus, it was unnecessary to complete and even ace the course.

Would the class have been better if he had focused more on the math? For me and a few others, perhaps. But this was a 101 course. Everyone else would have been left behind, or dropped the course because their impression would be that only people who can do more advance math can understand it.

We, and everybody else, do a lot of math at the table. It's impossible to play without it. What I do very little of is arithmetic.

Well said, eneely. My experience in physics was similar, when the instructor concluded a 20-minute discussion by writing a simple formula on the board for those of us who understood math. For me, the formula clarified everything he said.

The folks who take a beginners' course on poker for fun probably want to learn poker well enough to play in a casual home game setting without feeling completely clueless. Definitely cover the most common rules, proper etiquette, and basic strategy. In terms of the math, I suggest not going any deeper than a discussion on counting outs, evaluating good outs, and explaining the rule of 4 and 2, along the lines of how to tell when it's worth it to chase a draw.

I know some folks who took a similar class and then started a home game with some of their class mates. The last I heard, the game was still running after several years. They started with micro-stakes cash games.

I've had the same idea to do something through our Communiversity or a library system. Will you be making your final outline to people here in case we want to teach classes in our area?

OP, try to outline the class on where you want to go timeline wise.

1st 1/4 of class, history
2nd 1/4 of class, procedural
3rd 1/4 of class, basic ABC play
4th 1/4 of class, advanced concepts like leveling etc

Adjust to your specific class then fill in the gaps of the overarching themes (whatever you decide).....

I know I only mentioned it briefly, but The Tao of Poker is almost worth teaching in its entirety, and is probably a good $4 used on Amazon bit of suggested reading.

Most importantly it reminds you that the goal of poker is not to make money, but to play well. Players who play well, will, in time, make money. There's several other good poker mindset books, but this one is bite-size, pocket size, and $4.

Teaching poker math is probably one of the best illustrative examples of basic probability you can give people. It's a wonderful opportunity to teach someone odds.

While I suppose the long-term ramifications of betting on black or red (with a green spot or two out there) is perhaps simpler, it's fairly easy to construct situations in poker where calculating: If((Pot/Outs)>Bet) then Call.

well, for someone who likes to win money at casinos, I hope they do. As a teacher, maybe I hope these "it's not about the math, it's about playing the player" guys gets the message that playing the player is complete horsepucky bad players use as an excuse to sit at a poker table, and that people who play the math game LOVE having them around.

But also, I think my class is a different one from the one OP is planning to teach. I've definitely hosted a few poker parties for the purpose of getting utter neophytes a taste of the game and enough basic procedures in place to keep it entertaining, and the closest I get to math or strategy is "don't show anybody your cards". Depending on the audience and time available, that's a perfectly fine endeavor.

OP plans to teach the game "up to hand rankings, if necessary". My fantasy would be to blow past a ranking chart in the 2nd or 3rd session.

I've read that and a lot of it is good. It would make a fine "how to approach the game" session in an intro class.

I thought OP really meant to write "down to hand rankings, if necessary." I would hope he's going beyond hand rankings.

I don't know how many classes he is going to teach, and how much you could reasonably accomplish in each class. I'd keep any math (or arithmetic) until the latter part of the course. I'd keep it super simple like the times 4 and times 2 as Abbey suggested, unless there is time to go deeper into it.