Note: This is in regards to mostly NL Hold'em. It can be applied to other forms of poker as well.

I'd like to think of myself as a winning player- we're all winning players right? - however, there is something that I feel is holding me back. Variance. I'm not making any claims that I have every single poker edge in my arsenal. Although, I feel I have the general concept of how to play the game and when to put my money in when I feel I have the best of it.

This thread is all about putting your money in when you have the best of it. Unfortunately, the worst thing that can happen to a poker players ego is going all-in with the best of it, being correct in their assertion, and then losing due to variance. I'll illustrate this in a quick simple example: Let's say you have AA and an opponent goes all-in preflop. You call. You're opponent shows 22. You're roughly an 80:20 favorite. However, our friend 'variance' decides to give your opponent a set while your hand did not improve.

I'm sure this has happened to almost everyone who plays poker. I started thinking about different ways to minimize variance so that my 'skill' could perhaps play a more determining factor. Then I thought of the new styles of tournaments/games that several of the more popular online poker sites offer. Just to name a few: 8-game, matrix tournaments, and double-or-nothing tournaments.

This made me think of a new game which kills variance. It would be identical to a regular game with the exception of one key detail. The moment play has stopped- whether someone has gone all-in or the river card is exposed and betting has finished- the pot would be split based on the percentage of winning that specific hand. I'll show a little more detailed example of what I'm talking about below:

You're at a 9-handed table, blinds 1$/2$, and on the cut-off. Everyone has folded down to you.

YOU (100$): Dealt AA

You raise to 8$. Button and small-blind fold. Action is on big-blind who has you covered. Big-blind re-raises to 20$. You go all-in. Big-blind calls. ( Note this may not be the best way to play Aces on the cut-off.) You show your Aces. The big-blind shows Jacks. There is 201$ in the pot. You're 100$, small-blind's 1$, and the 100$ the big-blind called you with. Action stops here. You have an 80% chance to win the pot.

201$ x .8 = 160.80$
201$ x .2 = 40.20$

You collect 160.80$. Your opponent collects 40.20$. No flop is shown. The next hand is dealt...

With this theory of play there would technically never be a 'bad beat' and variance would never play a factor. The only time a player would lose money is when they had the worst of it. This would also work post-flop. There are some pro's and con's with this alteration which I want to leave up to discussion. If anyone has any thoughts, questions, or comments, I'd love to hear them. This is also a plea for a poker site to perhaps make this a reality one day.

If this is true for you, my advice is work on your ego, not the game.

As a rational poker player, you realize that this kind of luck evens out very quickly, and you earn close to your expected value. If there weren't variance to fool the irrational players, you wouldn't make as much money.

Take this to the extreme, suppose you could take all of the luck out of poker. Everyone sits down at the table and gives all their money to the best player. What kind of game would that be? Who would play, other than the best player in the world?

There are other forms of luck in no-limit poker that take longer to even out. If you don't like those, you can stick to limit. If you don't like the risk of drawing cards after an all-in bet, uou can ask players to run it two or more times. But if you really want to reduce risk, don't play.

I agree that it would drive out a lot of irrational players. However, it would kill variance for those who cant afford variance.

I don't really like the phrase 'the long run' because it's indefinite and most players don't have an indefinite bankroll.

An example could be you have a 200$ bankroll and invest 5%(10$ games) of your bankroll at a time in STTs while trying to move up to the next level. With the normal tournaments if you go on a downswing and go 0-5, you just lost 50$ and are now at 150$. You now have to consider dropping down a level to play the 5$ games to work you're way back up to be even.

I just think it would be a neat type of tournament. I don't think every single game should be changed to this style. It would be interesting like the Matrix style tournaments.

That would take aloooot of fun out of poker though. Imagine a WPT final table, and someones tournmanet life if on the line, they're all in on flop, and you have a coinflip situation. That they should just chop the pot and continue playing?

Pretty funny post, I find my profits go much higher when I play a higher variance LAG style. Changing speeds to court variance and exploit your image is really a key to being a longterm winner imo.

Also, variance is the ONLY thing keeping weak players in the game. Why in the world would you ever want to kill it?

This gets suggested a lot. It's a bad idea.

This.

Without the luck, fish wouldn't play. They don't play that much chess, do they?

Haven't read any replies but this would kill the game.

Tons of fish and poorer players would stop playing.

It wouldn't work at all for tournaments. All you'd have to do is go all-in pre-flop every hand and you'd never be eliminated.

There are pokerrooms where you can deal it twice.

IVariance

Besides all that's been said, you do realize that doing this after "ther river card is exposed and betting has finished" means that one hand has 100% equity and all others 0%, right? Kinda boring.

And anyway, variance is nothing that proper bankroll management can't take care of.

In its defense, an "allin equity payoff" could help get poker fully legalized. It would make it look more of a skill based game rather than pure gambling.

As far as arguments against it, there would still be variance in the game due to the non-showdown hands and to starting hand variance so maybe it wouldn't lose that many casual players. Players could still lose a stack since there would still be 0% equity hands on postflop streets versus the nuts. Lots of people still play chess, bridge, scrabble, RPS etc. It wouldn't be hard to modify tourney rules to accomodate this payoff scheme. (for example, players with below X number chips after Y number of hands get knocked out)

In the renaissance card game Primiera, this is exactly what they did. Primiera was comparable to the modern day Poker and it was widespread all throughout Europe where it is believed to be of Italian origin.

If a player had bet on a numerus, and another player was drawing to a higher numerus, then he would receive the proportion of the pot that corresponded to the probability of his chances of winning.

In those days, a numerus was simply 2 or 3 cards of the same suit out of 4 possible cards. A primiera was 4 cards of different suits and a fluxes(flush) was 4 cards of the same suit.

probably better is after an opponent sucks out, you ask for your equity back after the hand. with a bat.