Have to disagree. I think what you wrote is "pure collective ignorance." Please send your donks to my games, and I'll send the competent players to yours. And we'll both be happy. But just one of us is going to see an increase in his EV.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

In general, I agree with Greg. However, his point is less applicable to tournament play, IMO. In that arena, I prefer to play against predictable players over plain bad ones. I guess you can say being overly predictable is a trait of bad players. However, there are plenty of truly horrid poker players out there who are very unpredictable. Unless I have a significant chip advantage against them, I prefer not to see those at my tables.

Valid arguments could be made for each point. This very weekend I witnessed a very competent player get his ass handed to him assuming he would run over the donks. However greg you should come up with an original quote to better illustrate your point.

Of course competent players can lose to the donks in the short run.

Here's the bottom line: Obviously bad players are easier to beat than good players. If that's not true, you're calling the wrong players bad and the wrong ones good, by definition.

True, however it's rare that you play heads up against a lesser player where you can put your skill advantage to best use. Especially if you are at a table with lots of bad players, you will often find yourself in larger multiway pots where your skill advantage will be diminished.

How do more bad players diminish your skill advantage? That seems like the whole thing about how some people would rather be 80% to double up with AA than 50% to quintuple up.

If a player is predictable and easy to outplay, then they are not a good player. It sounds more like some of you want a predictable bad player rather than an unpredictable bad player. On that topic, I can't agree or disagree, because then we need to dig into more detail about just how bad each type is playing.

And while you can certainly beat a player in the long run who is solid preflop, but straightforward fit-or-fold postflop, you are going to win a lot more chips from the other types of really bad players out there. If the higher EV comes with higher variance, so be it. But variance does not, by definition, reduce EV. It just makes the long run further away.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

I believe AA against one random hand is 86% and gainst 4 random hands is like 55%. That's quite a drop off. However, even bad players do not play random hands. They play marginal hands in situations where they are not getting good odds/price. These types of hands do much better against AA. I don't have a calculator handy, but I believe AA against 4 players who are playing normal marginal poker starting hands is well below 50%.

All that being said, in tournament play it comes down to risk of ruin. I would much rather be 86% to double up than 55% to quadruple up (if those were the real odds), particularly near the beginning or end of a tourney (but for different reasons).

So, the more opponents you have, the more luck plays a role, and therefore, the less your skill advantage matters.

I will make one caveat. Against exactly two players, there are certain aspects of skill (such as knowing when to squeeze, or play middle position) that don't exist against a single opponent. So there are times those situations can be profitable over heads up. However, I will add, that playing these situations right often requires a lot of skill, particularly in reading your opponents

Your last statement is true, but its kind of theoretical. In the real world, too much variance (on the bad side, of course) can lead to ruin and the end of one's poker career, or at least a premature end to one's trip. Of course, this could be mitigated to a great extent by good money-management (a life skill far too many skilled poker players lack), but we're talking about poker skills on this topic, not life skills.

And there's only so much poker skill advantage can do when you're at a table full, or sufficiently full, of loose players who are seeing lots of flops. Yes, if you get lucky, and avoid getting unlucky (which I guess is the same thing), a loose game can be very profitable. But then you are still relying on more luck than a game where the outcome of hands against far fewer opponents has more to do with your skill advantage.

Aka and DaFar, you are both falling prey to a mistake made by good players, and one that has been debated on this website since it was created (and on RGP before then). This is the belief that skill will win out, but is unlikely to do so, unless you can minimize the impact of luck.

It is very true that you can play a strategy that has lower variance, one that avoids large high risk pots unless your advantage is overwhelming. But doing this will greatly reduce your long term EV. The key is not to avoid variance all the time, but only to avoid variance when the options are quite close in terms of EV. But if you avoid variance when the higher EV option has a much higher EV, you will be in that position of having a dramatically lower hourly win rate.

As you said, AA against 1 random hand is about 85%. So, 85% you have 2x, and 15% you have 0, for an average stack of 1.7. Against 4 random hands, you are about 55% to win, and will have 5x when you do. That equates to an average stack of about 2.75. This is much too much to give up. If you were to fold AA in this spot in order to reduce variance, you are giving up too much equity. And this is just as true early in a tournament as it is in a cash game. If I could have this chance early in the WSOP Main Event, I would be thrilled, and would never consider folding.

BTW, if instead of 4 random hands you race against 4 top 10% hands, your edge actually goes up just a little bit.

In a vacuum, reducing variance is a good thing. But not if you're paying for that reduction by more than a tiny decrease in EV.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Multiway pots tend to maximize my skill advantage, but I have a particular set of skills that are honed for exploiting multiway action. I do less well in games where most pots are contested heads-up.

Well, certainly, a player can tailor their game to take advantage of any particular situation.