A GTO strategy is not a function of variance.

Bull****

Finite bankrolls means that variance and profit go hand and hand.

Hand is interesting theoretically for a lot of reasons. Variance vs profit is another GTO inflection point.

We have already realized 100% of our flop equity so our inflection point is 0 for profit. That means we should play with zero variance OTT.

Just one reason why this is s GTO check back.

Another reason is that our profit ismade solely on the river. We chopped all the money that went in otf

Lol.

I am not quite sure what this means..

But I am pretty sure that variance does not affect how you should play a hand. Variance just means that the individual results of a hand will be different from what your expected value is. Only over a large sample of hands will your monetary gain or loss reflect the actual expected value.

You should always play your hand according to its expected value, right? Variance is just sort of another consideration that doesn't affect expected value.

I think I understand what you mean by "our profit is made solely on the river". Like if you hit the draw, you will have 100% equity in the hand. But your equity changes not only based on the cards but also on your actions. Like when OP fires the turn, he is adding some fold equity to the equity of his hand. So his EV goes up.

IDK... I don't know that much about GTO. lol

Unless you're folding every hand, or have the hot and cold nuts, you don't know your EV. It's a theoretical construct that assists in finding optimal lines. But you can also find lines that help you know your EV better than other lines would. If your estimate of EV is very accurate, your variance will be low because you can avoid plays that make it more likely you'll miss your EV.

In other words, if you play a perfect game like Russ Hamilton was doing, your variance will be low. E.g. Russ's variance was lower while seeing all the hole cards than it would have been if he could only see one hole card of each player.

So there is a correlation between variance and EV but some people get confused about what that correlation indicates. E.g. someone who folds every hand will have no variance. That may be desirable for some players. And I believe it has already been proven that if you are a losing player, you should attempt to lower your variance. (This may be the cobweb that IMA is slinging.)

Yes you need to make assumptions in order to calculate EV -- because the hole cards are hidden.

No, the calculation of EV IS an assumption.

Correct, LOL. After villain checked OTT, hero should have tried to negotiate a chop, or mucked his hand. Because variance is bad in that spot.

I'd like to revisit my flop raise sizing here for a second, because I was thinking about it last night and I remembered another reason why I sized small (2.6x).

I said earlier it was because I was planning to raise/fold, which was true, but I also thought the smaller sizing would keep his range as wide as possible, meaning he would fold to bombs on the turn some of the time. Maybe that was where I screwed myself up in the hand? If I simply make it 4x ($300) as someone earlier ITT suggested, he either comes over the top there and I fold, or he calls and I can much more comfortably assume he's not folding to my turn bet on a non-club.

I'm still pro raising on the flop, but I'm starting to think my expensive turn mistake was a symptom of the bigger problem in the hand, my flop sizing.

Thoughts?

6, Ace, or club. . . AaaaaagghhGhhhh

Don't be result oriented. If you play laggy with proper bankroll, this hand plays well but just run into the top of V's range.

Flop I might go a little bigger.

People have different styles. For tight players, you can control the variance by not bloating the pot with a draw. But you said you are laggy, play your style. It is not easy to play other people's style if it is against your heart.

Dude, the first thing is stop whining when your opponents don't play their hands the way you want. If you don't stop, you're going to spend a lot of time whining. Second, if you're not prepared to stack off on the turn, don't bet. When a TAG calls your bet, an alarm should go off in your head. The nature of a TAG is to move you off your hand; there must be a reason he acted contrary.

grunch

Hand is whatever. Probably fine as played given his range going into the turn is something like {qq+ kq+ ATcc+} and he probably folds enough of that.

There is always an inflection point where the EV is not worth the risk. Partly because of risk of ruin and partly because losing makes us sad and when we are sad we do not play well or we do not play at all and both cost us more money.

If you are stupid deep it's OK to recognize that you are not comfortable losing all this money in a thin spot and either adjust your play if you think you can still be profitable kind of pot controlling/nut peddling or leave if you don't.

If losing 300bb is devastating I'd suggest leaning towards the latter option. People get dollar signs in their eyes thinking about playing deep with bad players but the fact is that only a small portion of that money is won getting it in with the nuts. If you're nervous about shoveling money in as a moderate favorite against his range, your expectation in deepstacked games isn't nearly as high as you think.

I think it's likely true that a bigger raise on the flop would have made the hand easier to play. Maybe he was able to figure out what you were doing more easily because of your sizing.

That's why, if you're going to get laggy or tricky or whatever, it's good to pick a spot where you have some insight into the situation: game flow, tells, knowing how villain thinks. It's live poker, why give all that up and play spots where our information is the same as we'd have in an abstract exercise.

Similarly, we went after a good player at the top of his game. So, when we were a little unlucky, i.e. he was at the top of his range, he read the situation well, played the hand fearlessly and took our stack, while many other players would have been too afraid of a bad beat to play the hand this way.

So you can reduce variance without throwing out this type of play entirely. Instead pick better times to do it.

Fold pre is OK too. Wouldn't do it often, but I think it's good to make tight folds just to be disciplined and use all your options. If you are going to pick some times to fold SCs on the button, a good one would be when you're facing a good player on a good night who probably has a good hand.

This is exactly what I am arguing against, although I may not be expressing it clearly.

1. Check back the turn.
2. Take effing responsibility for the way you played the hand. OWN IT. If you are continually looking for excuses or for palative narratives, you are going to get OWNED at this game. "He read the situation well?" WHAT? Hero's play was transparent!! Be objective, and don't project. Hero moved in on the turn with a pair of 4s. THAT'S what happened.

Where have I not taken responsibility? Where have I whined? I posted this hand because I know I butchered it, and I want to get to the root cause of why it happened and make sure I don't make the same mistake/series of mistakes again.

You didn't butcher the hand and unless you know something that we don't, you didn't play it transparently. I assume you would play a set the same way, if not there are some issues with this hand. V did not play this hand fearlessly, V had top set. He didn't care if you had a set because he could beat a set. All the Monday morning quarterbacks on this thread have no idea what V would do without a set. If he really is going to station you with AQ, this is a bad play. It is not a bad play because top set was willing to GII.

Do you expect a TAG will three bet this flop often? If he has a strong one pair hand he is rarely folding flop but he also isn't trying to GII. A call is a pretty standard play here with a variety of hands.

It is also pretty rare for someone to shove this turn without the nuts. Again, you are rarely getting shoved on and when you are the range is basically only sets, which are a small part of his flop calling range.

So much results orientated thinking in this thread.

What you did here was look at that one particular move in isolation and then over-generalize it. And then, oh yeah, you added a non-sequitur at the end.

Hero is obviously crushed going to "4th street," and then he plays that street horribly. There should be alarm bells going off loud and clear when THIS VILLAIN, in THIS HAND flats a raise on the flop.

OP, you got it in with the worst of it, and it was probably obvious to everyone at the table that's what you were doing. No amount of hand analysis will cure that. Just stop doing it.

Again to clarify (I apologize, clarity simply isn't my strong suit).

Your idea about betting bigger on the flop is counterproductive. All you would be doing is turning your hand into a bluff. I.e. moving villain off all the medium strength hands that you need action from in order to make this a +EV spot, and thus GII v. the top 25 - 20% of his range.

You played it fine, if this is the way you want to play. But doing this kind of thing with stacks this deep is probably not optimal. He offered you a free card; just take it.

I'm not suggesting that some players would be afraid of losing to a lower set. I'm suggesting they would be afraid of being drawn out on. They might move in on the flop, or even the turn (without checking).

Maybe V, being a good player at the top of his game, figured out what was going on, factoring in the possibility of set over set. He believed, if we didn't have a set, that we were in aggro mode. He figured he could get stacks in on any good turn with a big edge, and that's what he did.

You played it fine. Turn is, as played, more of a check back, but betting isn`t horrible.

In general:

1) You are thinking to much about the wrong villain. We should care less about outplaying V1: Our targets are V2 and CO. There is no reason to call preflop OTB if CO wasn`t coming along and the blinds aren`t droolers.

2) Every option on every street is pretty close EV-wise:

Pre: Folding pre is ok. Calling is ok too and ,if we have to play it fancy, even 3betting is good. V1 should like never 4bet here and we can outplay him on a lot of runouts or realize equity by playing our position. All in all: Calling isn`t a mistake

Flop: I call to keep V2 in the hand. Raising is sexy, but we have to be able to empty the clip OTT and OTR if we miss. Plus: We aren`t stacking off if our draws hit, RIO and the ability to play this hand "perfectly" makes a call here better than a raise. If we call and V2 comes along, we have a rather easy b/f OTT if we hit (flush, two pair, trips).

Turn: Bet and check are both good options. I like a check here to keep the pot smaller, but betting is good as well.

3) "Always go for any +EV Spot" is one of the dumbest advices I have ever heard. Who ****ing cares about a tiny +EV Gamble in a high variance spot? This is a 100bb buy in Game and we have 300 bb .. We fold and wait for good spots to play with the fish, it`s way more valueable to be 300bb deep with some fish than winning 25$ in theory in a high variance spot. Life Poker is so easy and the best players aren`t the fancy ones - the best players are the ones that can stick to simple principles in every hand: A) Exploit the fish, B) b/f with top pair type of hands is like never bad, C) nitting it up is better than counting on people to be able to lay down hands, D) a raise OTT or OTR is like always a hand that beats a one pair and .. and so on. It`s easy

^ this is good advice

No, it's not; it's stupid. There is a VERY large amount of variance INHERENT in the game; you can't escape it. If you spend your time at the table trying, you won't win.

If you have an overlay, you should take it. Period. It doesn't matter who you are playing against; if you have an overlay against Phil Ivey, TAKE IT.

OP is describing this as a "high-variance, slightly +EV spot," as AN EXCUSE for the way he played the hand. He ran a draw into a TAG who showed significant commitment to the pot, and he stacked off OTT with a pair of fours. He's confusing recklessness with variance.

Lol. +1

Least we can all agree that this is a pretty marginal spot and i think it's better to take these thin/marginal spots when we have some pretty solid/good reads on villain in general to take a pure exploitative line