Quote:
Originally Posted by local-
Well, training sites take out of player pool too. Secondly , do you play PLO?
I've had months I ran 5k below EV on PLO200 couple of months in a row. I would gladly pay 150$ to insure myself.
Even if you have big winrate, you can still have many consecutive months of losing. Everyone who has experience big down swings gets this. You have to understand that many players don't make it because of variance. Its a form of insurance. People insure many things in life.
Training sites offer something valuable in return.
Paying more than a very small price in order to reduce variance is fishy. It's part of the reason Phil Hellmuth is seen as a mark in cash games. Other than the fact he plays pretty badly, every time he gets it in ahead he values his own fragile mindset more than the EV he's gaining and asks to give away equity in the form of insurance. This is a very difficult job in some ways, one of the biggest is dealing with variance. It's just lazy to give away equity in order to reduce it when you can just try to improve your mindset. It's well-understood in gambling circles that insurance is -EV. That's why the business exists.
There's obviously nothing to stop people who trust each other swapping bits of their action in order to reduce variance, but this level of organised, mass-swapping is sketchy at best. If you can't take the variance, perhaps you should find a different game.