Agreed, and this doesn't take into account a common leak among "good" players at low stakes. Too many player overestimate their own skill level while underestimating their opponents.

It would be great if we were all super-studs who could be reliably confident in our assessment of super thin EV plays. The reality is that often players will be making the wrong decision in these situations.

It's doesn't have to be that a player it taking these spots, it's that he/she believes they are making the correct play when in fact they are not. It's easier to be right when the margin of error is greater.

Jeez I don't even consider it playing poker until I am >200 BB's. The time between buying in and getting to >200 BB's is always the nut low of the session for me.

Some people's nut low is other people's wheelhouse.

GsolongasyouareawareofwhereyourwheelhouseisG

There's plenty of poker that can be played under 200bbs. There is plenty of poker that can be played under 100bbs. Just waiting for hands isn't optimal, regardless of stack size.

Variance is exactly how BGP said it earlier. It's how much you vary from your expected winrate. Higher winrate is less variance for a lot of reasons. climbing out of a downswing winning 10bbs an hournwill happen much faster than if you win 4bbs an hr, for example.

Bolded is wrong. Read the last page or two.

Higher winrate makes you less susceptible to variance causing a long downswing. It does not mean less variance. It does not mean less negative variance, either.

If you make 10 bb/hr and suffer a long stretch of running 8 bb/hr below your winrate, you are still showing a small profit. If someone else wins 6 bb/hr and runs 8 bb/hr below their winrate, they are losing money. Both players experienced the same amount of variance.

Variance (standard deviation in bb/hr or bb/100 ) can be high or low for different players at different winrates, depending upon skill and playing style.

I likely have both higher variance and a higher winrate than a lot of winning players at small stakes NL.

He's using "variance" to mean the outcome of that equation that includes the mean value (winrate) and the standard deviation. Which is reduced if the mean goes up.

You're thinking of the standard deviation as the "variance", which is (somewhat) independent of winrate. If anything I'd expect a higher winrate to have more thin edges and larger standard deviations. So that's also more in line with what many people are thinking of when they use the term (myself included).

A guy who takes thin edges is also a guy who gets paid a lot, which should lessen his variance. To me it seems impossible to quantify the width of possible variance and the extent to which various playing styles affect it. Spending all that energy trying to reduce or master something which by its nature represents the "luck" factor in poker seems to me insane. Focus on being the best possible player and making the most EV+ move each and every time. The rest will sort itself out.

Thin edges also *lose* a lot of those pots. Which increases the "up and down" volatility of his results on a hand by hand basis, even if it's more profitable overall.

That's not what I mean. When you take a thin-edged spot with a marginal hand, the value part of your range gets paid more than a guy who plays conservatively and doesn't push the thin edge.

Anyways the reason people confuse variance and downswings is because the practical application is in its effect on downswings. Having a higher winrate will reduce the chance of a significant downswing.

Ragequit: I didn't necessarily mean you should be buying in 200bbs. (Although if you are able to and play better than the field that'd be the most +ev, and with the game you've described 200bbs is not really that deep.) I meant that you should buy in for whatever gives you the best chance to win. You've made it sound like you're sacrificing some edge in order to have more buy ins. I'd figure out what amount gives you the largest edge and buy in for that amount. If you want to eventually work towards being most profitable at 200bbs then that's a great goal, and a good middle step to playing 2/5.

Cuse, I agree about razor thin spots but Tbh when I see or talk to guys trying to employ lo variance strat I mostly see them avoiding big pots with non-nut hands or unmade hands not thin edges. In fact I see them do all kinds of thin stuff in small pots.

Leaving aside the thin edge question for a moment, let's talk about playing draws aggressively vs passively. The aggressive player (note I didn't say loose or tight) who recognizes board texture and his and his opponents range can seize fold equity that the passive player cannot. So he's playing a larger pot with higher total equity where the passive player is playing a smaller pot with less total equity.

Edit to correct: more correctly he's playing the equivalent pot with greater total equity and a larger pot with the equivalent equity (not to mention likely greater implied value).

The "lo variance style" knife cuts both ways.

Just as a spewey aggro (and I'm speaking from experience lol) can overestimate his fold equity, passive players frequently overestimate their implied odds when drawing. They finally get there, bet and villain folds and they only collect on the direct odds which often are by definition "thin" without the implied value.

For someone trying to build a roll the best chance they can give themselves is to improve game selection ime. And by that I mean learn what lineups and game conditions their predominate playing style, the one they are most comfortable playing, fares best against and seek those games out while minimizing exposure to less favorable conditions.

As they become rolled more soundly they can worry less about game selecting and improve/expand areas of their game that they are less comfortable with but which will increase their expectation in those less favorable lineups/game conditions.

Just my $.02

cA****likeabirdandeatlikeanelephantAm

So this is probably obvious, but for those missing the mental connection: basically every hand has variance.

If we GII pre with AA vs. a random hand, we're like 85% to win. So if we lose, we hit the **** out of variance. If we win, that's just the expected result, right? Wrong. The expected result is to win 85% of the pot. That will obv never happen, so even if we get the most likely result, we've hit positive variance (discrepancy from EV) of 15%.

I totally agree that a lot of people miss huge equity spots by trying to be low variance (a great example is failing to build a pot with a nut flush draw against someone who has tons of non nut draws in their range). I was basing it on someone making the best adjustments, whereas a ton of people will make the wrong ones.

As for your roll building advice it also cuts both ways. There's the side you suggest of game selecting to fit your playing style, but then when you learn to play other styles to beat other types of games, the stakes will be higher if/when you take your lumps. So there's a trade off either way.

^^^^^^
We are in agreement.

Can anyone help me here? I'm trying to compare two games, Australia vs London.

Australia (Treasury)
10% rake capped at $15 for a $2/$5 game
London (Hippodrome)
5% rake capped at £10 for a $2/$5 game

Can anyone run any calcs here to work out any of the below stats?
- rake paid per hour
- rake paid in 2,500 hours
- what impact this has on potential winrates assuming both games are average skill level

Cheers

Wish someone could teach me how to know I have 51% or 55% or 47.23471% equity in a pot . Poker would be so easy my WR would be everychipOnTheTable / hour.

My complaint about these "avoid thin spots" strats is give-me-a-break that anyone has that precise and accurate opponents' ranges figured. (And if anyone could, they are well well beyond building a roll). If someone is "cutting out thin spots" I would lay good money they aren't passing on ~0EV spots, they are passing on +EV spots and misrecognizing them as "thin". In reality, good poker is going after perceived by solid +EV spots, but being imperfect we end up in some ~0EV or even -EV spots sometimes. You can't just "cut these out of your game".

The other problem is overlooking pot odds and making huge EV mistakes because a spot "is risky" - like calling $100 off with 30% equity but getting 3:1. Folding is just bad.. regardless of your "roll strat". If you can't chase EV, then you will also be very easy to play against.

Need to know average pot size (or at least % of times rake is maxed) to be able to answer that, I would think.

Yeah the "1%" edge thing is thrown around ... As if.... I'm on board with all this ^^^^^ but i think I was clear in earlier post.

To go completely old skool, scared money don't make money and makin money is the best way to out run variance.

Could you just use general assumptions about your stock standard 2/5 game? Numbers ofc don't have to be exact, just want some sort of ball park.

Just to be clear:

I prefer playing deep stacked. I play nut draws aggressively in good spots. I'll bluff when it's likely to work. I'll bet a straight draw and rep the flush on the turn. I'll triple barrel a weak/tight player on the right runout. I'm very aware of table dynamics and will move seats/tables when appropriate. I don't have a predominate style, rather my style is fluid and determined by table conditions including my stack.

I'm not saying marginal hands are any hand where I don't have the nuts Fat value might be 2nd pair vs a bluffy maniac, air IP vs disinterested weak/tight as much as an overpair flatted headsup vs a loose aggro type who over values top pair.

In my opinion avoiding marginal spots is not necessarily weak tight. What I mean by it is playing tighter (particularly OOP) preflop and just folding the flop when the overall situation looks marginal.

For example the other day I iso raised AJs 100bb deep IP and 2 limpers called. Flop was AsTx8s two-tone (no FD for me). Both villains were capable of limp calling AQ and even AK/TT (very limpy game). Flop action was: UTG donks pot and MP tank calls.

Now I really can't possibly put an accurate % on my equity here because I haven't got a huge read on UTG other than he is moderately tight and quite passive and I don't entirely know what MP tanking means. However my gut tells me it is marginal because I have 92bb behind and I guess they are all going in before the end of the hand if I continue the flop and, in my experience, my AJ will not be good an obvious majority of the time. So I just folded. Turn is a blank, UTG shoves, MP tank folds and shows an Ace. UTG looks annoyed.

I guess what I mean when I say marginal is not this clear mathematical 55% equity. What it is is that I think I am flipping but I have tons behind and my read is weak so I could easily be wrong about being 50:50. I.e I'm not going out of my way to win small pots by putting a large stack on the line but when the pot is bigger I'll go the other way and err on the side of continuing. It's as much a way of trying to avoid big mistakes as to avoid big swings.

Big mistakes in big pots = big swings, low win rate and longer downswings due to low win rate..

Small mistakes in small pots = small impact on winrate but better than the alternative above.

This isn't really about avoiding variance at all. You just think you're behind and a call is -EV. The fact that there's money back also isn't what makes it additional variance, it's more that it's a RIO spot and when you're ahead the pot isn't getting much bigger, while when you're behind you're effectively obligating yourself to call it off if you call flop.

Avoiding big mistakes is about keeping your expected win rate high, it doesn't really impact the variance of it at all.

A better example of avoiding variance would be that you have Th9h at the turn, and board is QhJh4c5s. You know your opponent has AQ here, and you're 2:1 against hitting on the river. Pot is 400 and V bets 190.

Calling here is +EV. You're calling 190 to have a 1/3 chance of winning 590, so calling makes you about $7 on average. However, it's also going to add variance, and someone who's worried about going broke may not want to make the call. They could instead fold and effectively be saying the variance is not worth $7 to them.

My general concern with worrying about variance though is that it's hard enough to figure out the EV in these spots. I don't know how someone would be able to do that, and then also figure out how much the variance is, and finally decide whether or not the variance is worth while to them. How does one price the desire to avoid variance? In the example above, how much EV would someone be willing to give up to fold this spot? If it was $20 in EV, or $30 in EV, would they still fold?

That's not avoiding variance...just oblivious to math.

If you are guaranteed 7% return after 5 years in the market, would you care that you're losing month to month or year to year?

People who don't understand this concept are usually the same people who would make really bad preflop decisions that are -EV in the long run, and justify those decisions by selectively remembering only the hands they won.