I know that running it once twice or thrice doesn't affect the outcome or odds at all. So I'm wondering what are your opinions on this?

Yesterday I was all-in with AA against AKs, i ran it twice and chopped the pot. I'm feeling ****ty about this. As a favorite should i run it an odd number of times to ensure the pot is not chopped?

Doesn't matter in the long run. All it does is lower variance. What if you lost the first run but won the second? Would you feel bad for running it twice? Don't be results oriented. The big issue is that people may push much lighter on you if you are known for running it twice. But that can be a good thing too

Totally depends on your comfort level.

I play in a 25c/50c home game and though allowed to run it multiple times I've only ever done it twice (for 450bb+ pots getting all in on the flop with oesfd vs a set both times). It's not enough money for me to worry about the variance in that situation.

However I also play in a 1-3 and 2-5 game here in NY, and will often run it multiple times in 200bb pots.

I will always run it multiple times if people ask to (I prefer 3x to 2x), but I will never really request it unless it's a large enough pot for me to care.

From a value perspective it doesn't matter at all. If you think one choice is more likely to result in yourself or the villain becoming tilted then that should be taken into consideration.

Assuming a bank roll that can sustain multiple trials of whatever situation you are in, running it twice has completely 0 effect on the long term profitability of the play that you make.

The one thing that it will do however, is normalize the results and make is more likely that you will reach the long run expectancy in a short time frame.

Lets take AA vs KK AI pre flop for 100bb each. (It's a magic place with no rake, and no tipping.)

You run it once, there are two outcomes:
You are at 200bb, which happens 80% of the time.
You are at 0bb, which happens 20% of the time.
Overall EV, .8*200+.2*0= 160bb.

You run it twice, there are 4 outcomes:
You are up 200bb, which happens 64% of the time. (80% for the first, * 80% for the second.)
You are at 100bb, which happens 32% of the time. (20% you lose the first one * 80% you win the second one, + 80% you win the first one, 20% you lose the second one.)
You are at 0bb, which happens 4% of the time. (20% for the first, 20% for the second.)
Overall EV, .64*200+.32*100+.04*0= 160bb.

If we extend it out to 3+ trials the idea is the same. Your EV will always be exactly 160bb. But the range of options of ending stack sizes will increase. In addition though, in terms of raw number of results, you will be more likely to end close to the expected value of 160bb.

The less times that you run it, the more likely it is that you run into an extreme case.

As everyone else said, running it twice does not change the outcomes at all.
I used to run it twice every time to cut down on variance.
However, the problem with running it twice is that it makes people more comfortable semi-bluffing draws. If you have AA, and agro rec player X has 4h5h and the board is 3h 9h 8s, if rec player has seen you run it twice before, he is going to be more comfortable raising your bet here to try his new bluff technique, since in his mind, even if you go all in he still has 4 chances to win instead of two which is basically a sure thing to him.

Isn't that a good thing for you though? You should want people get it in bad and shove with draws against your overpairs. Plus it'll lower your variance significantly so swings won't bother you when you get it in as a 60% favorite or so.

Exactly.

I think you should run it twice.

It's an investment with the same return on capital for much less risk.

That's always a good thing.

That's only a good thing if short term risk matters. If we play poker regularly and aren't concerned with short term risk but our opponent is then we should only run it once.

How does rake work when running it multiple times? Is a rake applied to each run? If so, it makes no sense to run it more than once (as the more times you run it, the more the rake will have a significant impact on the ever decreasing pot size).

GcluelessNLnoobG

if you are underroled then do it

if not dont do it if you dont like the principle

i dont care as i always have a big bankroll for every game i play

but if the other player asks i will comply as i try and represent an enjoyable player to play with. but if he doesnt ask i wont ask and we will just run it once

It's not 100% relevant to the thread, but this is bothering the crap out of me:

What I bolded is incorrect. It might still be true that the EV stays the same, but this justification is totally wrong. When you are running it twice from the same deck without replacing the cards, the pots are not independent events, as you are implicitly assuming they are to do your calculation.

To see why, take AA against KK and imagine running it 9 times.

Your method will tell you that the probability of the kings scooping all 9 pots is an astronomically small number, like .000000512 (which equals 1/1953125), but not zero.

In fact, due to card removal, the probably of the kings scooping all 9 pots is literally 0. That's also the probability of the kings scooping 8 out of 9. (There are only 2 kings in the deck and 4 queens/4 jacks/4 tens, so the kings can make 2 sets and 4 straights and then they literally have no way to win any more.)

That doesn't prove the EV is NOT the same--in fact, I think it is. But your method doesn't imply that.

As for the actual question in the thread, if my bankroll were big enough to justify playing in the game I'm in, I would never run it twice.

If you're more comfortable playing deeper stack (after this hand) and get more money to the table, run it once. If you feel better play shorter effective stacks, or have concerns about losing the fish for good, run it multiple times.

If such concern doesn't exist, I would say don't waste time on running multiple times, saved time = +EV

at the place that i play you have to pay an extra $2 in rake to run it twice. Therefore it's -ev, imo.

I saw a situation in a PLO game where there wasn't anybody waiting and everyone was having a good time and a player was all in on the flop. They agreed to run it twice but the player got scooped and left. The guy who won the hand said he usually wouldn't run it twice but didn't want the other guy to leave.

So in that situation, where there's some value in the other guy staying at the table vs leaving, it probably is +ev to run it twice. Your EV on the hand doesn't change but there is a greater chance the other player doesn't leave.

Sure, its great if you are certain that their range consists mostly of draws. But a lot of rec players play their draws passively and their value hands agro to protect against the draws, I don't want to give them incentive to play more balanced since it makes it more difficult for me.

What about KK hitting a four flush?

I totally agree with you on this. That's IF they adjust. Maybe it's just me but I always ask to run it twice unless the pot is really small and I've never had someone adjust by raising with a draw or marginal holding because I run it twice. And if one person does adjust you could always refuse against that particular player

This is actually one of the reasons I would not want to run it twice.

If I get into an all-in pot with the table mark, and he's on his last buy-in, running it twice allows him to stay at the table more often--meaning that his money is more likely to go to someone other than me when he finally does lose it all.

Meanwhile if I run it once and he does double through, that's fine with me because I still (probably) got it in good, and I have more buy-ins.

In the example he gave the AA had the KK trumped on flushes.

Would be interested to see the odds of KK winning it all of the times vs AA if you ran it 7, 8, 9, and 10 times (I think 10 times is the absolute maximum you can run it in that situation and win all of them).

But your EV on that hand remains the same. You get an equal amount of his money in the long run no matter what.

There's also the phenomenon of the presence of a bad player causing other people to play poorly as well. So the longer a 'mark' stays at your table the more opportunity you have to win from other players.

This is how everyone thinks (even players who are pretty terrible!) and it's precisely why you want bad players at your table. "Ooh, fish! His money is mine!" And then they're in every hand trying to play bingo for this guy's last 60bb.

It does appear that 10 is the maximum times you can win in that spot. That is why I never run it more than 10 times when I have kings vs Aces.

4 straights
AQJT
AQJT
QJT9d
QJT9h

4 flushes
9876ssss
9876cccc
5432ssss
5432cccc

2 Sets
Kd
Kh

If you run it 10 times you've dealt out 54 cards total, so that's impossible.

Also if you are counting possibilities and not probabilities, you completely missed the point of my post, which is that card removal changes the probabilities of winning in such a way that you can't count the events as independent anymore.

DK: fair points. I guess it could depend for some people. But I still would personally never run it twice.

Do you mind eleborating a little bit on why you never run it twice vernon? Just curious what kind of reasons your weighting in this decision.

Well, first of all, I would never run it twice in some situations but not others. Like in DK's scenario of running it twice to give the fish a chance to stay at the table, if I run it twice with him, and then later I get all-in with someone else and he asks me to run it twice and I don't want to, the other guy would have a reason to think I was treating him unfairly, and I don't want that. That's just a personal thing for me--I want to make sure that no one thinks I'm playing by different rules against different people.

So I would either always run it twice when asked, or never run it twice. And I'd opt for never running it twice because when I play a big pot I want money to change hands. I feel that I can handle losing a big pot better than most of my opponents can (from a tilt standpoint), so the possibility of a chopped pot isn't appealing to me.

Now, that being said, I've never actually played in a place where we were allowed to run it more than once, so for me this is all theoretical.