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.

So ive been reading through the responsesnin this thread and i find the discussion quite interesting. Im curious to learn more.

I have very very minimal coding and AI technological knowleg... but i had a thought that i wanted to share that may or may not be a possible solution...

Is there any way to use encription embedded within the source coding of a given online poker game so that the poker bots would not recognize what is happening on the board during live game play?

In other words can specific card values shown on the board be camoflauged or disguised so that the bot does not receive the correct card values, or perhaps receives no information at all, or even is caused to misread it entirely and not recognize it to be the board of a pomer game but something completely unrelated to poker.

Id love to hear feedback and of its even a possibility or not. Thanks

My best guess is no, that's impossible. If you can see the cards, then the bot should be able to capture the screen and get the exact same thing that you saw.

Sites could use random funky fonts and/or different colors on the letters/numbers representing card rank to make the cards harder to read, but it’s not really a great idea for multiple reasons …

One being it would also be harder for humans to read. Two, it would just be a temporary obstacle … bot owners could just train their bots over time to be able to read the fonts.

When the whole Houston Astros cheating scandal came to light, I remember thinking the counterstrategy would be to mix up the signals every now and then. Not in terms of the sequence/indicator but the actual number assigned to the pitch. So 1 becomes the slider, 2 = fastball, 3 = change, etc. You'd only need to do it occasionally for the system to falter. The first time a batter faced a heater while expecting a changeup, the confederates would know that a) they can't trust what they're seeing, and b) they've been caught in the act.

Similarly, I agree with the above that the AI would just get retrained for whatever change is implemented. But if the change could happen at random, unpredictable intervals, then the bot would not adjust accordingly in those spots. Like the batter getting fooled by an incorrectly stolen signal, it would be pretty funny to see some bot call off on the river with eight high because it "thinks" it has a straight or something.

its a flawed argument..

Going less to showdown , can increase std deviation as much as always going to show down can , by always calling

on a perfect strat , easy example, if you can see your opponents hole cards , you would have a skyrocketing red line with the least std deviation possible and absolutely no downswings .

you're assuming that redline players fold less and bluff more , meaning they are actually deviating from EQ , meaning that they are making more mistakes , and that yeah will increase std DEV

Anyone have the issue of loading GTO wizard and it just being a black screen? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that. I tried looking for a GTO wizard help thread on here, but can't seem to find one and hopefully someone here can help me out. Can't contact the GTO wizard people, because the only way it seems they contact people is through their discord which I don't have.

This post got it. Seems like some people dont understand the formula though. You could also just explain it by saying the more money you put into the pot the more std dev will increase. I.e in HU you put in more money on avg as you say, and also 3b / 4b. When stacks increase std dev goes up. Std dev is a lot lower assuming you play short stacked.

Think the whole redline discussion is trivial though, but could be wrong about that. I think people read into it too much because most people overfold hence it increases your winrate to some extent. But also clearly when you play bigger pots on average your mistakes are clearly a lot more expensive. Comparing PLO vs NL is a good example i guess. Std dev is a lot higher in PLO despite winrates being twice as high on average. But you are also all in a lot with 60/40 equity.

just no..

this formula can be applied in poker , to get some data on the pools you're playing , but thats it ..

theres no correlation between money put in the pot and an increase in std deviation, without looking at other stats

HU std deviation is usually lower cause winrates are higher , again assuming that both players have the same winrate .. or that you're playing someone with a lower winrate that if he doubles up he might quit .. the bigger the edge the less std deviation you will have compared to 6max , so nothing to do with money put in the pot

std deviation is lower playing short stacked ? what .. mtts are purposely made to start deep to allow players to build a stack , and literally getting from an average stack of 200bbs to 30bbs after 5 to 6 hours, cause an mtt can't last 7 days.. clearly the shorter you are the more std deviation you will have ..
if you buy in for 20bbs in a cash game table , you're just lowering your winrate , you just lose less per hand .. thats one hand .. just cant interpret things the way its more convenient

PLO std deviation will naturally be higher on smaller samples , std deviation goes along with winrate .. so thats why you can't use this formula without introducing winrate.. over 1m hands , if you have a 10bb/100 winrate your std deviation will be lower than a 5bb/100 winrate at NLH .. one does not go without the other

comparing NLH with PLO , its not a good example , they are different games, but i'll give you that one , as im not 100% sure , the other arguments are very very easy to prove wrong

Edit: there's a variety of external factors that would need to be added to the formula, like hand sample, vpip , pfr, 3b , wwsf, winrate , stack size , average stack size etc etc etc to get close to make such assumptions

Brain

I cant find the roadmap anymore, whens the PLO slated for release?