Problem Sessions
The twelve-week teaching schedule: what happens in each problem session, what to prepare, and what leaves the room.
Each week's Problem Session takes a claim the lecture asserted and recomputes it from scratch, with the working exposed. Bring a method you cannot get to balance rather than a request for the final number: these are the hours where a derivation gets debugged, not where answers get handed out.
Getting started
The first Problem Session — no assignment is due yet, so it's spent agreeing on notation and working the week 1 example by hand together
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Counting practice
The second Problem Session — deriving the week 2 combo and class counts by hand, then reusing the technique on a smaller counting problem
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Pot odds practice
The third Problem Session — rebuilding the deck's flagship hand from scratch, from outs count through to a call-or-fold verdict in dollars
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Variance workshop
Recomputing the flagship hand's EV at a bigger pot, then measuring the variance and sample-size effects a bare EV figure never shows
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Value of information workshop
Rebuilding the lecture's blind-vs-informed EV comparison, then building a second toy example from scratch with new numbers
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
Bayesian updating workshop
Rebuilding the flagship Bayes update from scratch, then updating on a second signal to see the posterior move again
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
Indifference equations practice
Re-deriving optimal bluff frequency and MDF from scratch, then solving both at a new bet size to check the method, not just the memorized ratio
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Exploitability workshop
Computing best responses and exploitability numbers for opponent frequencies not covered in lecture, to check the formulas generalize
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
Multi-way equity workshop
Running the multi-opponent simulator on a hand nobody has seen, and auditing which other course results would need re-deriving with 3 players
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
ICM workshop
Running the recursive ICM calculation on a payout structure and stack distribution nobody has seen, then a two-player sanity check by hand
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
Kelly criterion workshop
Computing Kelly fractions and growth rates for bets not covered in lecture, then locating the actual peak of the growth-rate curve by hand
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
Capstone review
Working through the Kuhn poker solve by hand at a small scale, then a closing discussion of what the semester's tools did and didn't capture
Week 12 · 10 May 2027