Technically you wouldnt even be absorbing any variance. Assuming you arent looking at your "investment player" day to day or week to week results.

If he averages $50/hr and plans to play 2000 hours in those 18 months, he should make around $100,000. You're going to pay him $50/hr every 2 weeks or whatever you make payday, and then hes going to give you $15,000 at the end of the 18 months. You wont even know how much variance he experienced. You're just making an investment with a predetermined profit level for you.

And that's exactly why it makes no sense for the player with a healthy bankroll to buy that insurance. Now someone playing a short bankroll might be interested but you probably wouldnt trust that person enough to pay him regularly.

Meh...back to the drawing board

Next time I'm at your room I'm going to shout your username + 10 BB/HR to figure out who you are.

Just seems a contradictory idea people are willing to sacrifice EV for a smoother graph but wouldn't buy my theoretical "variance insurance".

I would have to collect data to renegotiate every 18 months or whatever based on whether winrate appears to have gone up or down. Collecting the variance data would be important for me in order to figure out how many "customers" I could have, also whether a player has started slacking off and is no longer profitable as an investment etc.

But yeah I agree playing poker for a fixed wage would be really boring. Maybe I throw in health insurance for 30% profits.

There actually could be some pros that would buy the theoretical insurance but I think it would have to be less than 15%. In reality I dont think it would ever work and I do think the insured player would work less hard and their win rate would suffer, but I really like the idea on paper.

Yep classic moral hazard problem with any insurance

Thanks! Given some of these 100hr win rates being cited, I don't even know if I'm a winning player.

The more you play, the more you'll know if a during a certain sample size you were just running hot, playing better or whatever. When I had my record 100 hr sample which was only back in Feb, there was no doubt in my mind that I was in God mode. I kept telling myself "enjoy it while it lasts: because I knew I was experiencing a freakish streak. I won 20 sessions in a row. I was playing well, sure, but I was hitting flop after flop after flop. I hit tons of sets and got paid off bigger than normal. People had 2nd best hands against me a lot...ect.

But yeah, Ive had 100 samples at $134/hr and at -$39/hr so an inexperienced player could easily misread his results in the short term. More experienced players should know the difference.

Amazingly enough, long term Im pretty close to right in the middle of that massive $134 and -$39 spread.

i was winning in my $2/5 game at about 10-11 bb/hr for ~500-600 hours.

i went on a pretty big downswing where i was probably down 10-12 buy-ins or so. i talked about this before somewhere, but i spent one weekend getting flopped set over set twice, and flopped set vs turned set once. nut flush vs 2nd flsuh on a non-paired 3-card flush board. flopped straights vs sets (and they boated up), etc.

the next 60-80 hours or so were spent just losing or breaking even.

i am now out of the downswing. i like to think i plugged up some leaks (played a bit tighter pre and post flop, etc), but a big part of getting out of the downswing was winning some massive pots, for example:

i played in a game a couple weekends ago where a drunk whale was just blasting off. whale opens to $30 (100% vpip, and blasts postfop with ATC). mp call. i call with 9dTd from co. button 3bets to $100. whale calls. mp calls. i call. flop 992. whale open ships for $1.2k. mp tank calls. i call. button calls. and i scoop a ~$3.4k pot in a $2/5 game.

almost 800 hours of $2/5 and i still have no idea if im good at poker or if im a clear winner. and my winrate is like 9-10 bb/hr.

that downswing really made me feel like 1) i sucked at poker and 2) the game is unbeatable. obv not true, but it really made me doubt myself and how profitable these games are

tldr - poker player goes on downswing and questions life and self. standard.

Best 100 hour streak was 18.5 bbs/hr ($2/$5 NL). Recently just logged my initial 1k hour, with win rate at 5.7 bbs/hr.

Definitely had a 100-hr stretch at $5/10 at like 35bb/hr. I've yet to run that hot and I play higher now.

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Wtf? 100 hour stretch like that?

Yeah happened over 4 weekends. One of my better months.

The willingness to sell EV for variance thing is because most players play massively underrolled.

Because, I don't play poker for a living, have a job and am a winning player, I almost never risk EV for variance.

I wouldn't be "underrolled" if my wife would quit spending my profits but I still take some pretty high variance routes when the game is good.

Oh man that's the story of my life. I also don't really play from a bankroll, but I do sort of try to keep my poker money set aside as sort of a savings account/poker money fund. I'd be playing 5/10NL right now if I could keep my wife's grubby hands off of it.

Are you guys not in control of the family finances or something?

Perhaps one would be smart to invest into teaching your wife some fiscal responsibility.
Although it too, is a +EV high variance line to take (depending on the type of woman you married).

They are the life's rake after all.

It's not like that. Its just I don't keep a bankroll per say and when I win, we usually spend it. I have no plans on moving up in limits and it's easy to blame the wife!

Unsure if I missed some examples but I would be interested to hear about some of these spots where those of you who advocate giving up ev for the sake of variance actually feel like you do so. The closest I feel like I come to these spots is where I am readless vs someone and I default to a fold/more passive line. I would not really count that as giving up ev for the sake of variance because generally speaking I feel like its the correct play b/c of how unbalanced people generally are.

Care to share?

When I started playing poker, my wife insisted we had a completely separate poker bank account and there would be no cash flow from household finances. So now that bank account is all mine.

Ya, I keep my poker finances completely separate from family finances. Only way to go

Yep, that way you can easily institute the 10% rule.

FWIW, it's not per say, as in per what someone says, it's per SE, as in itself from Latin.

I figure things like

Jamming combo draws deep
Making triple barrel bluffs
4 betting light
5 betting light
Bluff catching for your stack deep
X/r draws vs x/c draws
Going/calling all-ins deep with hands besides KK+

All of those make sense, except x/r draws is not always higher variance than x/c draws. It's situation dependent, but sometimes raising is lower variance than calling.

All the other things obviously increase variance if the other option is to fold.

Generally, any time you have a close fold vs. call/raise decision, you can fold to save yourself from variance without too much worry, granted the situation truly is very close to neutral EV.