Anytime you take an aggressive action as opposed to a passive action (checking or folding), the passive action is 0 EV and has no variance. Where as the aggressive action, even if +EV creates variance because it can either work or not work. So no, aggression definitely does not lower your variance.

EDIT: OK sometimes, and by sometimes I mean rarely, checking has variance because of showdown value (sometimes you're good when you check back a busted draw, sometimes you're not) but even then the variance of bluffing is definitely higher than giving up.

It kind of seems like people imagine passive nits when talking about TAG play when making this argument and perhaps spewtards when imagining lag play from the other camp.

You can be a TAG and pick your spots to apply aggression in a way that reduces variance. Taking in orphan pots. Selectively light 3 betting an aggro player who is smart enough to know that he must fold. Etc. You don't have to be LAG to do that. And it might work better if you are TAG.

LAGs aren't nec blowing their whole stack everytime they make a pair and they can also choose their spots. However, if you are playing more hands you will get coolered more. And i think at the low stakes many more of those pots are neutral or -ev due to rake and tips than most people realize. Obv playin lots of flips increases variance, even if they are small flips.

You're also going to occasionally bang your head against people who limp AK or it goes 3x call, call and they just call with JJ- KK.

And, while obviously none of us tilt on any fashion and we all have an iron grasp on the game, other people will find that it is much harder to keep their head on straight with LAG play.

any time you put money in the pot your std deviation increases because you are either winning or losing a bigger sized pot.

^^THIS

Variance is just a measure of how far on average points in a set cluster from the mean. Anything you do to make the pot larger increases variance.

A guy who just sits there and folds every hand has zero variance, for example.

I think what a lot of you mean when you say "X decreases your variance" is really "X decreases your probability of a bad downswing" but those are two different concepts.

Hey it’s this argument again. Lol statistics

I'd recommend limiting the number of BIs a player risks at a session. Especially so if going through a downer.

Personally, I limit it to two BIs. While I may have lost opportunities to recoup (had I risked more BIs), my game is not the same after getting smacked around.

That's good advice for people who go on tilt when they're stuck. Not so much in general, especially if the table is good. If half my table is whales I'm definitely not leaving after down two BIs.

You're underestimating the amount of people that go on tilt.

Yup, especially considering all the subtle different kinds of tilt. Most people think of Hellmuths verbal blowups as the only kind of "real" tilt, but obviously thats far from the reality.

People who tilts in a way that they change their game if they are losing is one of the most common theme. Like the tight nit who suddenly starts calling UTG raises with 9-5 suited, wich he have never done in his life before if he is breakeven or up in the game.

I agree completely with this, we're blind to what we don't know. I noticed that my own play is weighted towards certain plays that I believe are 'correct'. When I study afterwards I see that there were several options.

I just a made a post regarding a hand and made a comment about the solid style most of us play. While it is 'correct' so to speak, there are definitely drawbacks when we get into repeated patterns. For example I'm able to range tighter players very accurately most of the time. While I'm TAG, I do have some gamble and try to make moves if I think it will take down the pot, using my image.

Anyway, related to not extracting the most value I tend to see most players (mostly on the tighter side) just being terrified of every draw on the board and blowing people out of pots unnecessarily especially heads up....when they could have played the hand a little differently and made more.

For me 'boredom tilt' or 'losing tilt' is also a major leak. I've noticed that if I start a session winning I tend to do better, than when I start a session and get sucked out on or lose. Something definitely happens that affects my play.

I don't disagree with any of this and know what Mike is saying but OTOH if I'm better at hand analysis than 9/10 people there's not a lot of value in say posting it here on 2p2 especially when the quality of advice given is so random. I've posted a number of hands on 2p2 and typically I get conflicting advice and just end up re-analyzing the different possible lines myself. And I haven't had any hands I posted that ended in some revelation of me spotting a major leak.

Yeah, I don't know what I don't know, but I also don't know what others opining on a hand don't know.

The biggest type of tilt I still have is I guess what I'd call "OCD tilt" and it happens when I've decided I'm about to leave. Like my stack is exactly 1004 so I can play one more orbit of 1/2 and still cash out at an even multiple of 100. During the final orbit I tend to play super tight, and there have been several times I've folded a borderline hand like AJ in MP where if I'd played my normal range I would have won a large pot.

Anybody else have this issue? I've gotten a lot better about it by deliberately trying not to track how much money I have. I just bring a bunch of green and black chips. I still get a little OCD about leaving on even intervals of 25 though. I don't like having like three extra red chips.

More briefly, there are a lot of tactics that are lower variance and can be applied by TAGs or LAGs. Another one is to value target the bottoms of ranges more and the tops of ranges less.

So i think this is only one factor in the variance of your style, not the determining factor. A better discussion would probably just be if and how you should reduce variance in your game.

cash out the little chips and use it for something: a few maxbet VP hands (and cash out at the next green chip), a meal after the session, a sixer on the way home, $17 on pump 3, etc.

I do this as well although my other forms of tilt are worse in terms of setting fire to cash. I think it's an OCD thing since I have examples from my day to day life. For example if I'm about to leave somewhere (not just the casino) and it's 7:57 PM for example, I like to wait until 8:00 even. I've had friends and girlfriends point out this quirk of mine over the years.

I have "milestone" tilt, where I try to get to/stay at a round number before I leave. I'm ok if it's a bit above, but I hate it being a bit below. The most common manifestation is playing over tight when I'm about to leave (in which case, I should just leave then, but I hate not seeing my free hands).

Woe betide me if I have like $1009, get AK during that last round, open for $20 and then end up having to c/f flop. Now I can't bring myself to leave until I make $11 or more to get me back over $1K.

I have "expectation tilt." If I run good a few sessions in a row I dread the next session because I know I'm due some run bad.

Garick - when its time to go, its time to go. When you start thinking different those hands even though they appear to be free are not free. Rack up and GTFO.

+1000

I think this is one of my biggest improvements as a player. I used to have Garrick’s leak (and still do to some extent) but this past year got really good at leaving as soon as any of these thoughts entered my mind:

“one more orbit”
“thirty more minutes”
“fifty more dollars”
“well I’ll at least play the button/cutoff”

I’ve gotten soooooo good at snap sitting out when any of these thoughts enter my mind. If I get dealt a hand I don’t even look at it. On the button. I don’t care. I muck and leave. At first I was embarrassed to do this but now I confidently tell the dealer I’m done (and sometimes they’ll still deal me a hand because “BUT UR DA BUTTON”) and I just visibly muck it face down and walk away.

A lot of the young guns or pros or whatever they want to call themselves in 2018 think this is some mental game leak. I dunno. I’m still here. 5 years later. Literally no one else in any of my rooms is still here from 2013 (besides long term recs)

I suffer from this a little bit in home games (where there aren't always a lot of singles or $5's and cashing out weird numbers is annoying). Much better to tip the dealer the $9 and leave.

I remember clearly this one night a few years ago, I crawled back to -$3 from being stuck $400. I was planning on switching casinos and I didn't want to do so stuck for any amount. Yes, my ego was so big that I didn't leave cause of $3. Lost $500 over the next nine miserable, not fun at all hours. It was a soft 1/2 game too.

lmao that just happened to me the other night, where I was getting ready to leave and noticed my stack with like an exact amount of big chips that I could just take with me and avoid the cage. So I played the rest of the orbit but folded 1-2 hands that I'd have likely played otherwise to have avoided making change.

That being said, I disagree that it means I should have left. It's still equity im getting to realize. If I were to have entered the hand, I would not have given another thought towards my chips/cage scenario -- I simply passed on some marginal EV spots.

That's just finishing an orbit I've already played the blinds for however, if it comes to an entire down where I've already paid rake, then yeah I'd say nah fk that and leave

2/5 players having 10-30k downswings is most certainly not "standard" or should be expected.

If you have a 20k downer playing 2/5 you aren't nearly as good as you think you are.

I would venture to say over 50% of 2/5 pros don't have a 30k BR, much less enough $ to sustain a 30k swing.

This is still a leak. You're just compensating for one leak by using another. Granted, if you plug a huge leak with a tiny leak, the net gain is positive, so whatever.

The goal should be to be able to say:

“one more orbit”
“thirty more minutes”
“fifty more dollars” <---- NOT THIS ONE
“well I’ll at least play the button/cutoff”

And still play 100% exactly the way you would normally play. If you can't do that, so be it, but that should be the end goal for this particular leak.

"I'm still here"? What does that have to do with anything. Every (edit: most) pro has leaks, some bigger than others. You being a long-time winning player doesn't mean you don't have leaks.

It's not a big leak by any means, and maybe it's a leak that helps mitigate an even bigger leak thus making it +EV in some weird way, but to say it's not a leak is kinda silly.