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Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
OTOH if stacking off 8 ways has an expectation of a penny, whereas folding is break even, you would probably be better off folding. Expectation, while generally the driving force in making poker decisions, is not the be all and end all of poker decision making.
I already mentioned bankroll considerations and the fact there are likely spots where I can excersise skill in stead of being all in for marginal EV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
No, there are many things you can do to reduce variance, such as seeking out games which are loose and passive,
You could go on a +7bb/100 heater in a loose passive game which would contribute more variance to your results.
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Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
quitting marginal high variance games,
No one is capable of assessing the variance of a game in real time (more on that below).
Quote:
Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
or when the expectation of two decisions is close opting for the path with less variance.
I admit this could lower your variance, but I would think it is probably only relevant to 0 EV spots because it would seem rare to have positive EV situations that don't also contribute similarly to your variance.
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Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
You can choose to play games for which you are overrolled.
This reduces your risk of ruin but doesn't necessarily reduce variance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
You can also adopt long term low variance strategies.
All of the things you mentioned here seem to be ways to control risk of ruin, but that doesn't necessarily mean controlling the variance of your results. I undrrstand variance can be used to evaluate risk, but again that is only on data that already exists (i.e. past results). There's many reasons why it's just not possible to control the variance of results in real time or in the future:
1. Depending on how much data you have, you likely don't have an accurate idea of your winrate so in general you won't know how much variance a single decision contributes to your results.
2. Your winrate is an influenced by a variety of factors (game type, player compositions, individual hand winrates, state of mind etc) and some of those may even be correlated with eachother or interact none of which you can truely assess in real time. This means it will be difficult for you to assess how a single decision will contribute to your winrate.
3. Poker is a game of chance. This is probably the biggest one. You can do everything right, get all your money in really well and lose thousands of hands in a row. It might be rare lookinh at if from an equity perspective but it's bound to happen if you play a lot of hands of poker. Look up something like runs calculator to see what I mean.
So again, it's somewhat pointless or meaningless to try to control varaince. It just doesn't help you in any real way because variance is just an artifact of hands you have already played.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PokerPlayingGamble
To a winning player, variance is the enemy. A winning player will eventually get all the money, UNLESS he goes broke in the mean time because of variance.
You can have positive high variance swings. In fact it's probably how a lot of players became capitalized to play full time. Not that they aren't also good, but they probably had a few sessions of run-good to help make the transition.
The reason why variance sucks is if you're not well capitalized to play at your stakes, you could go broke before you can absorb a downswing. It also contributes a bunch of noise to your true winrate in the short term as well so it can be difficult
One final note I think everything you mentioned in your post is good advice for poker players, I just don't think it's relevant to controlling variance.