Charlotte Chabot displays the trophy she won at the Foxwoods Poker Classic.

The providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

WARWICK — Some people need time to mature, to decide what they want to do in life. Then there are others like Charlotte Chabot.

As she prepares to celebrate her 24th birthday, the Brown graduate, who was born in Paris and raised in London, operates her own business. She and her husband, Peter, are experts in mathematics and statistics.

If that is not enough, the couple also has a six-month-old daughter, Summer. They arrange their schedules so they can care for the baby themselves.

When she is not caring for her daughter or running the business, Charlotte Chabot also paints. An art major at Brown, some of her work is displayed in the couple’s Warwick home.

As of last month, Charlotte Chabot has another title, too. She is a poker champion. Competing in the Ladies Only no-limit hold ’em event of the Foxwoods Poker Classic, she turned the $300 entry fee into the $38,671 first-place check.

Her husband did fine, too. Peter Chabot entered the main event, the $10,000 Texas Hold `Em, that drew 206 players. He was among the leaders for the first two days before settling for 20th place — and a check for $25,341.

Between them, they turned $10,300 in entry fees into $64,012 in winnings.

Obviously, this is not a typical young couple. Peter Chabot grew up in Providence and attended La Salle Academy. He was still there when his ability in mathematics took him in new directions. He began taking classes at Brown while he was still at La Salle.

“They ran out of math classes for me,” he said. “Two days a week I’d take a bus to Brown. It sounds more exciting than it really was.”

Chabot, who is 32, did his undergraduate work at Holy Cross. Then it was on to graduate work at both Harvard and MIT. He did his dissertation on “An Econometric Investigation of Inefficiencies in the High Yield Bond Market.” He spent seven years at one of the top firms on Wall Street. He has done extensive research in game theory, combinatorics and probability theory.

Charlotte Chabot spent her youth in London.

“I come from a family of mathematicians,” she said. “I was the one who was different. I was into art.” She also studied theater for two years before heading to the United States to attend Brown.

“Both my parents went to Brown, as did my grandfather as did my uncle,” she relates.

It was while she was at Brown that she met Chabot. The two married and started their own firm, Minimax Consulting. They assist PhD candidates with their dissertations, businesses looking to enhance their operations and medical researchers requiring statistical assistance. Among others, they have done work for VISA credit cards and the Value City department stores.

“A lot of companies have in-house teams [for statistical research] but sometimes its too hard for their house statisticians. They’ll come to us and we’ll do it for them,” Charlotte Chabot said.

The couple deals with numbers all the time. It is what they do. Peter Chabot has turned his wife into a big Red Sox and Patriots fan. The two especially love the way the Red Sox make so many decisions based on statistics under general manager Theo Epstein.

The poker fascination came the way it did for so many others.

“We started watching poker on television,” Charlotte Chabot said. The game piques their interest in mathematics. They approach it as something of a mathematical challenge.

“I learned the mathematics of the game about four years ago. I started playing online,” Charlotte Chabot said. The couple then began playing at Foxwoods. The event last month was the third World Poker Tour event for Charlotte Chabot.

She was among the leaders throughout the event, which took about 24 hours at the table over two days. The key moment came at the final table. A player she felt was her top competitor was to her left, meaning playing just behind her.

Chabot was dealt a pair of aces.

“I had been sort of setting this up over about four hours,” she related. “I had been making some moves and wining a lot and she kind of caught on. Then she was making moves.” Rather than playing aggressively, as would be expected with aces, Chabot felt the read of her opponent called for different strategy. She limped in, meaning she bet the minimum.

“I was hoping she would make a big raise as she had been doing,” Chabot said. “It’s a little scary to limp in with aces. A lot of people don’t like to do that. But I feel in a tournament you have to take opportunities. I knew how she was playing. She went all in. Obviously, that was the best scenario for me. I couldn’t imagine anything better.”

Chabot won the hand, took a big lead in chip count and won the first-place prize relatively easily from there.

Tournament play is a mixture of knowing the mathematics and being able to read the other players.

“You have to apply mathematics and make the optimal moves,” she said. Her background, with her daily work on complex mathematical issues, is part of the reason she enjoys playing the game so much.

“Where I feel I have an edge is when the blinds get high some people don’t know what to do,” she said. “Some people get blinded-down they are reluctant to compete and gradually lose their money in the blinds. You’re never going to win a tournament that way. All the money in a tournament is at the top, so you really have to be aggressive and try and build a big chip stack. You have to take advantage of weaker players who perhaps don’t understand exactly how to use their chip stack.”

Beyond that, as in the case of the decisive hand in the tournament, players also must be able to read their opponents, as well.

It all adds up to a challenge Chabot enjoys. She hopes to play more. Her priorities are raising her daughter and running her business. But when possible she hopes to compete again.

“It is fun. It is competition,” she said. “It is exciting.”

pkenyon@projo.com