Just eliminate the River as a board card and turn it into a pocket card like in 7Stud. All AI into the garbage and more gambling because more hidden value hands and thus more bluffing.

Thats not the main reason bad solver nits underbluff river. They are just afraid of the variance involved in river bluffing.

That's different. If you're not making a play because you're scared of variance that's just bad poker

huh, bluffing river doesn't even increase variance

Must look into river bluffing. You can't be soft. Will shock the table.

I think it does.

Let's say you're sitting with 0EV air on the river with 100bb in the pot.
The solver mixes between checking and betting 1x pot.

When you check, the outcome on the river is always 0 = checking has a river standard deviation of 0.

When you bluff, the outcome on the river is either +100 or -100 = bluffing has a river standard deviation of 100.

Think all the fold/bluffraises, not even mentioning the fold/bluffcatch 0 ev spots. Ok ok pool is not solver and almost always you have a preferred action, but I fail to see how taking lots and lots of close but still >EV wouldn’t increase your variance.

Not sure as to the specific hand example on river, but on a macro level, one way to look at it is in terms of red line and blue line winnings.
A red line strategy where you’re constantly fighting for pots is gonna increase your WWSF which actually reduces your variance, at least in the long run, because you’re simply winning a higher share of pots overall, and are less susceptible to runbad. To describe it a different way: passive players are the most susceptible to runbad because they are completely reliant on run good to win.

I think you mean to say that increasing your winrate will reduce the probability and extent of a large downswing. Pretty much any red-lining strategy will increase Std. Dev. and therefore will increase variance.

Any action that puts money into the pot will increase variance. This includes bluffing rivers.

Source?

Just look up the definition of standard deviation and do a sample problem for calculating it. Then you will understand.

The majority of hands we play in poker are just folds... so no money enters the pot. When you put in 3-bets, 4-bets, put in money on flop/turn/river, etc. all that will increase standard deviation. You can also just run whatever filter you want in your database and see the standard deviation. SRP are going to have lower STD than 3bp and 4bp for example.

Statmanhal a 2+2 user here and I believe he teaches statistics would likely give a better explanation than me. You could PM him, he is very knowledgeable.

It should also be specifically stated that the definition of variance is std dev squared. Just looking at the equation should also make this relatively self evident.

okay maybe the fact that the bluffing Im thinking of being +ev would increase winrate thus feels like you are downswinging less, but its just the effect of higher winrate

Yes.

I was thinking a little bit and bluffcatching is the biggest "variance increaser", especially those small sizings like facing a B50 vs a rec where you need to be right only 25% of the time to breakeven. With the math behind bluffing, and how population overfolds a lot of spots at the micro/smallstakes, I can get it might actually decrease your variance, not increase.

Assuming you´re taking all possible edges when bluffcatching recs ofc, and I don´t see why you wouldn´t take them if you like money.

Seeing players openly discuss using GTOWiz RTA at the tables. Have screenshots.