I have experimented playing very tight and folding 22 -44 UTG and playing very tight oop (especially the blinds) I have also been flatting more often with hands like QQ or AK.

Is this a terrible idea if the swings of deep games get to me? I would like to know if you guys had any other tips that you have to help hedge those huge losing sessions

How many BBs do you buy in for typically? How many buy ins do you have in your BR buying in that deep?

You can either play like a huge nit, which a lot of the deepest buyers do, or you can buyin for amounts you are comfortable with/that fit within your brm guidelines and you can play poker without always being petrified of a possible cooler or beat.

Nothing wrong with taking the low variance line when EV is close either way, but this line of thinking generally leads to hourly rate ruin if taken too far.

The problem is that a lot of this game is frequently chasing thin edges that quickly accumulate to constitute much of your winrate. If you decide to pass on a thin edge in a spot, chances are there are few analogues to that edge that happen every hour you're sitting there. Suppose you're getting 3-bet frequently and you decide to raise fold KTs from CO deep vs a BU reg. Calling would have netted you 3/4 of a BB at great risk to your 250bb stack, and you're not only giving up that value rather frequently, but also encouraging people to push you around even more.

this is standard stuff anyway^ opening 22-44 utg is typically burning $ in fullring
the stuff about flatting qq and ak is just burning ev but thats another story

Thanks for replies. BR is kinda small (20k) I have a full time job so I have some extra money each month for teh pokerz

Do you guys actually think small .5bb differences in EV can be realized in 500hrs or roughly 15000 hands ?

I have never viewed 250bb+ poker as a game of small edges. 100bb poker yes but deeper games I nit it up and rake in large pots playing aggressively with my value hands ergo I would have to disagree. Deep poker is about leaning on opponents and letting them make terrible decisions where I can stack them or get large % of their stack into the pot by the river

It depends on how frequently the opportunity arises during the sample. For example, if a tight reg opens MP, a fish calls on the CO, and you're folded to in the BB, there are probably quite a few hands in your any-two-cards range for which flatting would be between 0bb and 0.5bb of EV. Passing on one of those calls will result in a loss of 0.25bb (on average) and could happen many times per session, and repeatedly passing in similar spots would add up to quite a bit of missed EV in a game where edges are frequently just a few big blinds per hour.

move down

I only play a few times a month. Usually twice

Til I burn a lot of money

well you have 8 buy ins- that's nothing

have you ever folded a pocket for 1 bb rakesy?

This. If you're going to sweat losing $20K, you should move down. If you insist on playing with 8 buy-ins while also caring about the money, then fold blind first to act before the LoJack. Trying to play deep OOP while worrying about $$ is impossible.

Thanks guys I believe you all to be correct about the bankroll

Assuming that $20k is a mini-bankroll (portion of savings) that would not impact your life if if you lost it, it really boils down to mental game and skill edge imo.

To be honest the fact that you are asking questions about "reducing variance" signals that you are uncomfortable with the money on the table.

Variance is the reason poker is profitable so we should not shy away from it unless we are not confident about our game (i.e. difficulty separating positive/negative variance and good/bad play), or playing outside of our bankroll (whether that is just mental fear of losing money, or actual risk of ruin).

Both of those things are common and perfectly reasonable. But imo it's important as a player to come to terms with the reality of your relationship with variance (bankroll/mental game/skill edge) and adjusting accordingly, as opposed to simply being afraid of variance or disliking it.

I am in a very similar spot with a full time job, a mini-bankroll that is too small, and uncapped $2/5/10 on the weekends. This subject hits home for me and I'm happy to chat more in PM if you like.

Oh and some more concrete advice: Run it twice whenever you can.

1) Position position position.
2) Deception.
3) Play more straight cards.
4) Be careful with check raises on flop and turn.
5) More blocker plays.
6) Don't go ape **** with AK pre for zillion BBs without strong history/read.
7) You don't have to cover all the donks.

I'm not even convinced that deeper stacked play necessarily equals a higher winrate vs fish. A lot of the biggest mistakes they make at 100bb wouldn't be as large of mistakes at 300bb. Also, I think the marginal increase in hourly that you get from playing much deeper might not be worth it to you if its a 10% boost for 100% more variance.

Covering fish not as important as having good relative position on troublesome players that cover you in my expierence

I know we're talking about reducing variance; but isn't covering a fish still pretty important especially when the fish has late street/big money leaks as opposed to typical small/medium pot leaks?

Wanted to add that 20k at these stakes deep seems to me like we would only want to be shot taking in extremely good games. Why not play $2/$5 deep somewhat comfortably instead and get more experience actually playing deep? If we're playing nitty and avoiding spots in $5/$T I feel like we're not only putting our BR in jeopardy; but also cutting into our hourly, and failing to turn our time invested into valuable experience in tough spots.

Do we ever move down? What happens if we take a 3 BI hit (roughly $4.5k) and now only have a 15k roll?

It seems like there are a lot of -EV compromises we're making to continue playing in this game, and possibly a lot of incentive to play a little smaller and probably still have a similar hourly.

I think Renton555 made a very good point on how fish can make different mistakes at different stack sizes. Sometimes if you are shallower you can get paid off quite easily with your value hands, whereas if you were deeper the fish would have "correctly" played more cautiously.

Personally, I still think max buying is generally the best strategy at live poker. Part of this is because I believe having a winning image is +EV because people will lose their confidence when playing against you. The other part is I think I make better decisions than a huge portion of the field. If a game is so tough that I should only be sitting with 80bbs then I should probably just go play 2/5 or go home and try to figure out what the **** is happening in season 2 of True Detective.

Nonetheless, I think buying in for ~100bbs is a much better strategy than people give it credit for because, honestly, in 2015 more than 150bbs rarely goes in without equities being thin or the hand generally being a cooler, so you might as well reduce some variance and have an easier time doubling up with bottom set.

The thing is, obviously if a 1/2 game was the highest game on the planet and you were the best player at the table, you would probably want to cover everyone. But there's a point where you could simply achieve a higher hourly rate by moving to a higher game than by increasing your stack depth. At which point bankroll limitations would curb how much you would want to buy in for. And so on and so forth. I don't really understand choosing to play a 2/5 game 400bb deep instead of just moving up to 5/10 and playing 150 deep there for a higher hourly.

What you are basically trying to do is to avoid the risk of going broke so you're giving up some EV to reduce variance which is fine. Reducing the chance of going broke is much better goal than reducing variance.

Most of the things presented in this thread do lower variance but I believe that giving up stuff like wide c/r-range on the flop or not 3-betting certain hands, flatting much pre actually increase your chance of losing it all since they are not imo optimal. I would never make consciously .5 bb/100 adjustment downwards, that's just too much.

I think the easiest thing to do is get pretty nitty with a game (and position) selection. Try to avoid games/seats where you would make marginal profit at best with big variance.

I'm also in the boat that getting deep with donks might not be that great as it seems. I feel like my experience and knowledge in ~100-150 bb games actually gives might get me a very similar EV than in deeper games against donks. 100-150 bb I just make so much better decisions than donks while in 200bb+ range the donk still doesn't know **** but I don't have that much experience and I haven't gone trough all the scenarios.

Life EV-

The answer obviously depends on why the fish is a fish. If the fish's biggest leak is that he doesn't know how to play optimally against a short stack, then covering might even be a disadvantage. If the fish's biggest leak is that he gets married too easily to second best hands, then obviously you want to cover.

On an somewhat related note, I increasingly am of the view that super deep live games are not the best games. A lot of regular games that play super deep are full of regs that sit there with 700 BBs and no intention of putting it in play unless a complete drooler joins the game. And if the drooler isn't there, the game is just grindingly tight. Everyone folds almost everything in early position and looks to yahtzee from late position. Games like that are exploitable for a small win rate, but they aren't the most profitable. And Christ almighty are they boring.

I'm not sure about other places, but where I play I think there are definitely spots where my hourly at 5/10 is lower than it would be at the average 2/5. There are a lot of regs who think they're too good to play lower so 5/10 will run with 2-3 recs who aren't even that bad and the average 2/5 will have several fish who are completely dead money and no one who's actually good. In addition the variance is way lower in big blinds as well as dollars.

Seriously this.

Several months ago I was sitting on $4.5K at a 2/5 $500 cap (humble brag). Shortest stack at the table was $1.5K. A 5/10 reg walked by and teased me about slumming it with the low stakes guys, then sat at one of the worst line ups of a 5/10 I could imagine.

GG bro