Any math to back up the quoted? Seems kind of a hand-waving argument - someone who plays a lot of hands increases the chances of going on a streak where he shows up with the second best hand a lot during his downswing.

aye?

It makes no sense at all that Vpipping more hands would decrease variance. The opposite should be true.

The hands we would be adding would be approximately breakeven, since if they were clearly profitable we would already be opening them and if they were clearly not it would be dumb to add them.

EV of folding is zero. By not folding ~0EV hands we have a greater deviation from the expected result, which is the greater variance by definition.

Also, I don't think I've heard anyone call poker fish "ploppies" before, hehe. I'm not sure the term fits them the same way it does with recreational pit game players.

Guys, I rarely play my hands anymore, and I never post in this thread anymore, what I posted got moved, sorry.

Online records confirm that TAG is higher variance than LAG. This is mostly because on the times you do VPIP as a TAG, you are likely putting a lot more money in to the pot, whereas LAGs play a lot of small-medium pots and only occasional big ones.

What lol. Where are these online records you speak of? Show me any evidence that a LAG's stdev is lower than that of a TAGs. And I suppose nits have the highest variance because they're always jamming money into pots with an overpair?

I think people see the sessions where they sit for an hour and half folding preflop and losing $20 doing it as "low variance" as nothing happens. Then the guys getting it in every other hand with trash for +40 -35 -30 -50 +80 -80 +60 as having higher variance.

There's got to be a statistical analysis of this somewhere ... right?

No, the contention is/was that a 28/25 had lower variance in wr than a 16/15 bc of the smoother earnings per 100 hands or however you want to think about it.

Put in a really oversimplified couple of sentences:

LAGs play alot more smaller pots with alot more smaller edges. TAGs play much bigger pots with sort of bigger edges.

I hate statistics and I'm sure 7 people will come in here and re-define variance again so I'll just grab that popcorn. BGP had alot of good stuff to say on this a year or two ago.

LAG's are often exploiting tendencies repeatedly. For example if somebody is calling too wide pre and then check/folding whenever they brick, the LAG will exploit this by opening wider and cbetting at a very high frequency. Each time they do this it will be profitable while risking a minimal amount.

The TAG however will be more reliant on winning at showdown in a select few big pots, not often picking up various small wins.

LAG is less variance than TAG.

Still waiting for data showing stdev of lag being lower than tag.

Why are FR stdevs lower than 6max when nitring is obviously tighter than 6max equivalent.

Lags win or lose most of their pots on the flop or turn. Tags I'm pretty sure get to the river more often. There's more built in variance in playing an extra street. There's a lot of variance in stud bc there's an extra round of betting.

I'm sure the *** em all bluff all streets lags will have huge variance... but I think those type of players tend to lack discretion. And are misapplying their aggression

Again I'm not sure about the actual debate wrt databases and statistics, but above is not true. It is opposite.

LAG is being misunderstood, here, as it often is.

(Good) LAGs are not 6bet spewing ******s, they play many more hands, in smaller pots, in position, and see many more turns and rivers.

Meale, do a search on posts by mpethybridge with the words TAG, LAG, and variance in it. He was an online poker database "leak finder" pre Black Friday and examined hundreds, if not thousands, of databases, and found that if any two players with the same winrate, the one with the higher VPIP would have lower variance. He posted about it often, with stats to back it up.

I stopped reading after pre black Friday.

Also, variance is less informative when someone is a losing player anyway.

What part of online did you misunderstand in Garick's first post?

smart play. Would definitely not want to glean any info from someone who has reviewed more poker databases than anyone in the world

Probably. Maybe im thinking of slags... Would you agree that TAGs get to showdown with a higher % of hands they play than LAGs?

Well you would hope so

Yes.

Look, I've played with, 2, possibly 3 good lag players live. Thats over 2K hours, 4 years. One of the things in common... you'll find yourself near the tail end of a session, you'll be counting up your solid 80bb win, and you'll glance over at the quiet non descript lag, and you'll see he's sitting on 250bbs, and you think to yourself, "what pots did that guy win? I don't even remember him going to showdown in any big hands?"

That's because they pick up tons of small pots. Tons. And they don't go to showdown as often as tags. Sure, they still get to showdown at a decent clip. That's because people don't fold in live poker.

Alot of people think lag means loose aggressive. Ok well it does. But alot of people think aggressive means spew.

Those euro kids 5betting K5dd. They spew. That guy who normally plays 10/20 PLO who x/jams flop with air, he spews. They have huge ups and downs and very well may be winning players (probably not), but they aren't good lags. You'll see these guys sitting on 1 trillion bbs and think wow what a lag! Nope, they are spewing with variance temporarily on their side.

That quiet asian kid sipping hot tea that you can't recall a single showdown hand of his yet he's up 1.5 buy ins? The one who overcalls btn 4 ways with 57dd? Who when checked to him on J34d bets 60% pot and takes it down? That is the real lag. Like I said, I've probably only seen 3.

Real BR/game selection question. I'd like to minimize my risk of ruin.

I have $3k to play. After that I get $100 per month allowance. I would really like to avoid busting the $3k and ending up on $100/mo for poker, so let's just assume $3k is my whole roll and if I bust it I quit poker, even though that's not quite true.

My game choices are 1/3 with 60-200 BI, 3/5 with 200-500 BI, 5/5 PLO with 300-1000 BI.

Let's say I beat the field by about the same amount in nlhe and PLO if playing about 100-200 BB. I've played a fair amount of 5/5 PLO but none of that was short stacking. I am not so confident in my SS (BI 300) PLO game, but I could confidently SS nlhe. Should I:
(1) SS 1/3, BI 60.
(2) 1/3, BI 200.
(3) SS 3/5, BI 200.
(4) 3/5, BI 500.
(5) SS 5/5, BI 300 (would involve boning up my PLO SS game just to build my roll).
(6) 5/5, BI 1000.

Thanks.

(1.5) Play $1/3 with a 100-150BB BI

(Z) play 1/2

Thinking more about it, I believe my lowest RoR is SS 1/3. Gives me the most BI's. I wonder if my ego is getting in the way of doing that. Or is the rake a real concern when playing with $60 stack?