Actually it shouldn't be the lowest variance. Limit holdem should be less. Because clearly most players would play every hand in omaha due to equities being so close and because they would get bored of course lol.

As a result although in holdem a careful player would be folding 70% of the time averaged all positions and when involved the other 30% not always seeing flop or continuing always postflop you may end up not having seriously smaller volatility only the illusion of it because of no all ins. But you do get the raise reraise games there too on multiple streets.

Also its hard to fold to a raise preflop and imagine if there is another one after. It gets ridiculous to fold given that at flop you wont face a huge bet anyway and the pot is now so huge. So pretty quickly you find yourself often involved in significant cost per hand and for multiple streets even because you still have something that can improve easily and because you are exploitable to bluffs if you fold so easy given the size created and the smallness of the bets you face.

Add to that that all ins or big bets in holdem can kill action and reduce volatility actually. So yes they are called sometimes but they also stop things many other times or control your behavior knowing that you can face them at all times so you cannot exactly be very speculative and not consider the waste of chips you can start having with little equity. Even a bluff can reduce volatility. Imagine a preflop 3bet bluff vs a call of a raise. It may easily prove that it has less volatility than the call option. Even when its called you proceed very carefully after that and rarely go all the way to the river bluffing. So the preflop aggression can reduce the volatility of the call option. It kills 50% of the action often and reduces future escalation on the other 50% because you know they have it possibly.

Being able to go all-in has little to do with variance. Limit hold em is notoriously volatile.

Yeah I"m pretty sure limit holdem is higher variance than no limit holdem. Theory vs practice.

Prior to Moneymaker no limit was rarely spread because it gave such little gamble to weaker players. They went broke too fast with relatively little chance of getting lucky. But people today want to play the game they see on TV regardless.


PairTheBoard

It seems like you're talking about Omaha generally rather than LO8. Split pots in LO8 make it lower variance than FLHE.

Yes limit high low omaha will have split pots and require some finer hand picking preflop vs just limit omaha. Its not clear why splitting pots is going to reduce the volatility by a lot though. I mean it offers chances to see multiple reasons to raise post flop by people that chase 2 different things too.

In any case my usual sd in holdem was 7bb/h. What is the one in Omaha for you guys?

Limit Omaha (high) is a great game for degenerate gamblers. Everybody loses to the rake. Omaha 8 or better is the game of the future and always will be.


PairTheBoard

7bb/hr for nlh seems very low. Were you only playing top 2% of hands preflop only buying in for the table minimum and 16-tabling?

I never paid much attention to my sd when I played online, so I cannot answer what my sd was. There are rarely good reasons to build a big pot in LO8. It is a nut-peddling game where most raising and calling is done reluctantly (except for by really incompetent players who don't understand that everyone else also has 4 hole cards).

See how wrong this is.

Its hard to be a deep winner like 0.1bb/h or better in lower levels with 2% hands played. Because you will lose 1.5bb every 9 hands call it 8 or 7 to take care of the lack of full tables all the time. This means that in order to make a net 0.1 even ignoring rake you need 0.02*x-1.5/8=0.1 or x =14.4bb averaged over AA,KK,QQ,JJ, AKs. This is impossible actually because only AA is at best 20-25bb with good non supertight image and usually less and the second KK drops geometrically down easily by 50% or so etc for the others.

See how wrong this is (the 2% joke).

Its hard to be a deep winner like 0.1bb/h or better in lower levels with 2% hands played. Because you will lose 1.5bb every 9 hands call it 8 or 7 to take care of the lack of full tables all the time. This means that in order to make a net 0.1 even ignoring rake you need 0.02*x-1.5/8=0.1 or x =14.4bb averaged over AA,KK,QQ,JJ, AKs. This is impossible actually because only AA is at best 20-25bb with good non supertight image and usually less and the second KK drops geometrically down easily by 50% or so etc for the others.

I am more like 25-30% avg. I open utg 10-12% alone. Btn if folded easily 30-40% or more with antes (so smooth adjust for all prior if folded). BB 60% or so if folded there. And then you have all the cases you call from late positions or complete from blinds or call from BB etc.