MIT Poker Course: Can a little calculus make a total novice into a gambling pro?
mentalfloss.atavist.com
mentalfloss.atavist.com
Longer answer: as a novice, calculus is probably the least of your worries. you can get up to par just knowing some algebra-level concepts, and also ratios/odds, and multiplication.
Whenever a site writes an article and then goes to play a tournament, it always annoys me that they never bother writing more clearly about it (I know it's also a brevity and reader attention span thing, but still). Should the author have just called with AQ? Who knows, it all depends on who raised, which position that player raised from, the author's current position, and the stack of each player (there's more but at least what I mentioned).
Position is one of the most important concepts in poker, and it's simple to understand and explain. The fact that this article never uses that word once means it has failed, even as a basic introductory article.
Back to the tournament: the author suddenly remembering effective stack, while also having an M barely >0. This is hilariously awful. It also means that the author losing was probably not unlucky since the author barely had any chips. I just glossed through the MIT site, and if you read page 10 on the tournament lecture from the MIT website, it pretty much spells this out.
It sounds like the course introduces concepts that would otherwise take a while to learn by yourself (M, implied odds, etc); however, understanding those concepts alone won't make you a winning player. Experience and surrounding yourself with other successful players are the two biggest factors. Most online pros have literally played millions of hands and have other poker friends to discuss strategy with. If you don't have those two things it's very difficult to succeed playing poker professionally.
If anyone can become a pro if they are smart enough and work hard enough is still true, anyone with the same qualities can make even more in the tech sector with way less effort and stress.