In the unlikely event that you were more than a 99% favourite, for example AxAx v 5s9s on AxAx6s where you would be 99.89%, and lost to the runner runner straight flush, you wouldn't be insured?

Not really something to worry about particularly, I'm just curious how it would work?

I'm sorry the number should be 100%. And yes the hand does get insured.

Then how are the insurance companies making money?

To be able to hold the 0.25% fee which every player starts with, the player only needs to play 300 insured hands or about 30K hands per month. Considering the fast fold types, this is not an outrageous number.

My point was that you can self insure yourself by saving the fee only to a certain extend. You can put 10K aside but that will only cover 10K when you go in a downswing. If you pay 10K in insurance fees, you get insured against over 150K in downswings at NL100.

How much a player is willing to give away for the added edge insurance can provide and the reduction in downswings will be different for each player. Yours is 10% of the current price and I can't argue against that. I respect your opinion.

the reference point is that nobody should use this and you shouldn't be allowed to advertise on 2+2.

I find it absurd that Emre has to tiptoe in this thread that is clearly dominated by break even losers. Unlike him I have no stake in the company and therefore can speak my mind freely.

First IP is a service they can charge whatever they want.

Secondly for the market they are charging far less than what other companies, even straight up actual insurance companies charge. So to say its a ripoff is kind of a joke, ripoff compared to what?

Boohoo you had to pay 30cents to insure a $200 pot oh god so unfair. The fact that winners use it proves its providing value to the market.

Edit: I think there is a market for players that grind millions of hands at low win rates... maybe have another tier where if you insure 5000 hands a month, its 0.1% or 0.05% or whatever.

You have not understood my comparison. I suggest you read it again.

Even the 0.25% fee is very, very, expensive. The fact that the astronomical higher price fee can be avoided by playing "only" 30k hands isn't really a plus point. (The mention of "fast fold" games is completely irrelevant.)

This is "sales talk" and completely and utter nonsense. Either you believe it yourself, in which case you should not be running this company with such a lack of number-sense and a flawed understanding of statistics, or- more likely- you are purposely misleading others who are reading this thread.

"You get insured against over $150k in downswings at NL100" is laughable, a complete misuse of words and statistics, and misleading on so many levels. The fact is, the cost of using the service after just a relatively short term will greatly out-weigh any EV-downswing that is remotely likely to occur.

No, my recommendation that the service would be worth using at 10% of the current lowest-tier cost is not particularly subjective. Although it is my own estimate based on calculations I have done.

It's irrelevant that I am a winning player, just as it would be irrelevant if I was an oxymoronic break-even loser. It would also be irrelevant if I liked to wear my wife's underwear on my head.

The owner has a right to promote his company, just as others have a right to question the service. It's absurd to get upset at people who are presenting evidence and logical arguments in order to greater educate others, and better equip them to make their own mind up about whether it offers them something of value or not.

Obviously I don't believe this service is a wise choice for players, but there's no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to advertise or promote themselves on 2+2.

If you ever allow players to deposit/cashout through player transfers I might check it out. Wouldn't use it with the existing payment options.

1) How does this service compare to getting offered insurance the "old fashioned way" (at the table)?

2) How does this compare to "running it twice"?

Is anyone up for doing the math? :/

For the same reason why pokerstars doesnt have a casino section. Because it's a steal and that kind of thing doesnt belong in poker. Ive always felt like 2+2 seems to care about the ethic in general just like pokerstars seems to

maybe they should go and insure slots machine instead or maybe insure me for when I misstype my poker password and lose time

1) The "old fashioned way" is arranged between players using on-the-fly odds. Assuming the players both know the approx odds (or have an iPhone app to hand) they both get a fair deal, with no fee of course. Even if they don't agree on fair odds (to both parties) it's still a zero-sum game, with no fee being deducted.

2) Run it Twice will significantly reduce variance for players choosing to use it. There is no loss (or gain) in EV from using this service. There is also no fee (as least not with Stars/FTP as they don't charge additional rake.) If any site did choose to rake both runs then you should not use it!

What if I'm prepared to pay a premium in order to be able to keep less money in my poker accounts and not wanting to go broke, am I an idiot for using this service?

It is completely relevant as fast fold games make it easier to increase the number of hands a player plays.

I've given you my calculation before. For 10K in fees you can insure over 150K worth of pots at NL100. So by paying 10K in fees you cover yourself against a downswing of size up to the unlikely maximum 150K.

If you save 10K of your money instead of paying insurance, you will not be able to cover a downswing larger than 10K. If you're using insurance, you can cover up to 150K. You may not think that downswings worse than 10K are likely to occur. But it is perfectly possible. And we are seeing this everyday.

http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tool...nce_simulator/


As I told you before, using insurance has other benefits such as gaining a mental edge and playing at higher stakes. You counter argument is that these would be true if the price was lower. I asked you what your point of comparison is and your response is related to the size of a possible downswing.

In fact for you to be able to effectively counter argue my point, you would need to say something like, these benefits will create x percent increase in win rate... and then compare the number x to 0.37bb/100 (the cost of using the service)

I'm not expecting you to be able to calculate this number because it will vary player to player. Bad beats and downswings have larger impact on some players. For them, gaining a mental edge might be worth more than 0.37bb/100.

Other players might be trying to move up in stakes. These players might benefit more from our service than someone who constantly grinds the same stakes and relies on rake back.

I think we're doing a pretty good job so far. This idea has been discussed on these forums so many times. I've been contacted by at least 5 different groups of people that started/wanted to build a similar business but failed. We're proud to have brought this to life. Shareholders of the company -me and my partners- are capable of deciding who can/will run the business.

I respect your intention to educate other players and take it for granted. Please have the same kind of respect when you're talking about our intentions. We're pretty transparent about the costs of our service and how it works. You should give us the benefit of doubt given that a lot of players and winnings players are already using our service.

You call some of the things I wrote "sales talk". The title of the thread is Official InsuredPlay Thread right? So the point of this thread's existence is just what you're accusing me of.

Yes you are.

BTW do insuredplay rep have rights to delete/moderate posts in insureplay thread or not?
Hope all PS tables have run it twice soon, so thei customers don't leak money out of poker account anymore.

Could you explain why?

Let's say I'm a winning player at 5/10 but only have a liquid bankroll of $15k. Without insurance there is no way for me to play those stakes as the risk of ruin would be too great.

If I make more using IP and play 5/10 than I would by jumping down to 2/5 without IP, how can the latter be the better choice?

The poorly done FAQ and the issues they have recenrly had with players show these guys are doing a very poor job informing the public.

Instead of posting a whole lot of vague statements like "it would boost your mental edge", "it will reduce your variance", "you can lower your bankroll management standars" and so on, you should create some real world scenarios where using your service is better than not doing so. As in, showing STRATEGIES of how a player could benefit from your services (should xplayer distribute his bankroll X% in the poker site, Y percente on IP, if hes playng Z hands at W stakes, etc). Until then, this whole discussion will be a waste of time and an accumulation of steam and most likely you will get steamrolled like most people who come to these forums with what they think is an awesome idea, but fail to show the real, practical value of their services and fail communicate their awesome ideas to the public.

Yeah, sure, you can say, "we provide the service and the user and the user is responsible to design the strategies and the the use they give to it". Well, I suggest you not to try that path.

Running it more than once will not decrease variance as much as insurance can.

You can have 50% equity in a pot and lose both times. You can have 80% equity and lose one of the runs.

Using insurance guarantees that you win your equity instantly. Minus the fee of course. So going all in with 80% equity you will guarantee 79.75%. Or 78.5% in the worst case.

We didn't do this. But it might be what you're looking for. http://www.whyplayinsured.com/

The benefits we describe will be greatly different for each player. We can't officially guarantee you will tilt less.

A calculator for how much money you should keep on InsuredPlay given the stakes you play and the volume you put in is something we are working on.

Am I correct in thinking that English is not your primary language? This would go someway to explaining your misunderstanding of much of what I'm saying, and your misquoting of me (as in your last quote above, which was prefixed with the word "or" in it's original context.)

You are unable to directly counter my points, and instead you are choosing to either ignore, misunderstand, or simply respond with- as you admit- "sales talk."

I have made it clear how gullible and ignorant people would have to be to pay such a premium for this service. (Over $20,000 a year for Supernova Elites, for example!) It is up to individuals whether they want to severely deplete their bankroll by doing so.

It is completely relevant as fast fold games make it easier to increase the number of hands a player plays.

I'm gonna go on a limb and say that he's aware of that.

I've given you my calculation before. For 10K in fees you can insure over 150K worth of pots at NL100. So by paying 10K in fees you cover yourself against a downswing of size up to the unlikely maximum 150K.

If you save 10K of your money instead of paying insurance, you will not be able to cover a downswing larger than 10K. If you're using insurance, you can cover up to 150K. You may not think that downswings worse than 10K are likely to occur. But it is perfectly possible. And we are seeing this everyday.

Yes it's unlikely. I mean I probably have a better chance at guessing right the size of the universe in miles³ than having a 150k EV downswing at nl100.

http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tool...nce_simulator/

I'm pretty sure this tool calculate overall poker variance and not just AIEV

As I told you before, using insurance has other benefits such as gaining a mental edge and playing at higher stakes. You counter argument is that these would be true if the price was lower. I asked you what your point of comparison is and your response is related to the size of a possible downswing.

Not sure I will get much of a mental edge if I run good during a week but got absolutely raped by the insurance. I think I would be more tilted than Ive ever been before. We always talk about how good it is when we are running bad but what about when you run good ? If a SNE is actually 20 000$ above EV, please tell use how much that will cost to him ? Pretty much the value of SNE.

What about when you are going through a big downswing but you are actually above EV (happened to me a lot) ? Damn that must hurt to pay 40$ to insure AA vs KK but never a single King around the corner.

What about if the player is actually going through a big DS, runs above EV AND is currently playing higher stakes than his BR allow him to like you seem to unwisely suggest. He could actually bankrupt faster than the speed of light. Since AIEV is ~25% of variance in poker, it's not even hard to imagine running bad while running above the AIEV.

In fact for you to be able to effectively counter argue my point, you would need to say something like, these benefits will create x percent increase in win rate... and then compare the number x to 0.37bb/100 (the cost of using the service)

I'm not expecting you to be able to calculate this number because it will vary player to player. Bad beats and downswings have larger impact on some players. For them, gaining a mental edge might be worth more than 0.37bb/100.

Do you even play poker ? Do you even realize what 0,4bb/100 is ? Are you kidding me right now ? Do you know that it's close to 10$/hour for a nl200 grinder that 16 table full ring ?

If you want mental edge, pay 1k to Jared (1-2 times) and get cured instead of wasting 24k/year using this service that barely fill the purpose of a tylenol.

Other players might be trying to move up in stakes. These players might benefit more from our service than someone who constantly grinds the same stakes and relies on rake back.

That doesnt make sense at all. How can you compare your service to rakeback lol.

MeleaB.

$100/month seems a good price for SNE 100NL players

RiT effects have been mulled over many times on the General Poker -> Poker Theory forum (read their FAQ). RiT doesn't alter EV at all and reduces the variance in all-in pots by about 50% (it would be exactly 50% if the runs were independent, i.e. dealt from different decks, but card removal effects are minor anyway). I've recently given evidence for the latter.

A commonly acknowledged measure for investment quality in modern portfolio theory is the Sharpe ratio, which is the ratio of the EV to the standard deviation. As Insured Play cuts the EV, whether it's worthy for a player is determined mostly by his/her winrate.

What share of the standard deviation IP leaves is measured by the ratio of a custom stat (Luck-Adjusted Std Dev (LASD) in PT4 and All-In Adjusted Std Dev in HEM, maybe it's built into HEM2, idk) to Std Dev.

As the standard deviation is a square root of the variance, the share of non-AI variance in the total one is the square of the above, i.e. (LASD*LASD)/(SD*SD).

Assume that someone has LASD/SD~0.84 (this ratio depends on the playing style). Then IP leaves only ~71% of the variance and RiT leaves ~85% of it (as the AIEV and the EV difference are independent random variables, thus Var(NetWin)=Var(AIEV)+Var(EVDiff), and RiT reduces Var(EVDiff) by half). Thus the std dev is ~9% higher with RiT than with IP (sqrt(85/71)~1.09). So IP, cutting the winrate by ~0.4 bb/100, is an attractive investment if and only if the net winrate (with rakeback included, life expenses and taxes subtracted) is more than ~4.4 bb/100. This threshold depends on the player and the game (at PLO fees are bigger but so is the share of all-ins in variance). E.g. I think I suck at poker enough to avoid IP .

Note that I'm not considering liquidity issues caused by IP as for those who prefer to keep siterolls short (not more than 30 BI), some part of the total bankroll can be stored in the IP account.

Fwiw the same criterion can be used when choosing between sites with and without RiT, e.g. if the above player has a 4.2 bb/100 net winrate on iPoker and 4 bb/100 at Full Tilt, the latter is a tad more preferrable from the Sharpe ratio viewpoint (4.2<4*sqrt(100/85)~4.3).

huge downswings will affect a winning player's edge much more than half a bb, that's for sure. and that doesn't even factor in having to move down in stakes

Thank you for contributing.

Can we add that the comparison of RiT and InsuredPlay is only accurate given that players will always face opponents who are also using the RiT feature?

The problem with buying insurance is there are many times it will hurt you.
For example suppose you stack someone with AA vs his KK. Next hand you get it in while behind and lose.

A player without insurance is break even right now. Someone using InsuredPlay would be down.

I am also of the opinion that this option is just not a good idea for a poker player and I think that the people who share this opinion have presented some accurate/valid points.

One thing though that I do not agree with was the statement that IP should not be allowed to advertise of 2p2.

I know that there are people who feel that HUDS are ruining the game. I, for the record, am not one of those people but it would be like saying that PT and HEM should not be allowed to advertise on 2p2 and that would be just as bogus.

Obviously there are players out there who think this is a good idea for them and their game play. If they feel paying the fees will help their mental aspect of dealing with variance, then more power to them. Maybe it will keep them playing longer and that can only be a good thing for online poker.