Hello Guys,

I know that there have been a few poker insurance threads here and a elsewhere regarding taking poker insurance.

For those that don't know, basically if you go all in with 1 more opponent and you are say 65%+ favourite someone may offer you 'insurance'. If you win, which you are supposed to most of the time, you will pay a small percentage of your winnings to the insurer. If you lose, the insurer will return you what you lost because of the 'bad beat'.

There are a number of new poker sites that are offering insurance if you are 67%+ favourite. I play on 1 of these sites and have always refused it when offered. Now, I watched a PLO poker coach on Twitch yesterday who was playing on the same site as I do and he was taking insurance every time he went all in as favourite. He tried to explain that taking it was 0EV. I had a long back and forth with him in chat that, if you pay every time you win which is 67%+ of the time (17.7BB's from a 100BB stack), how can this be? He pointed me towards his thread that he opened regarding exactly this subject which has some calculations that he says prove his point. I am not a maths guy so I find them hard to understand. I am not sure if I am allowed to link to another site but I would really like some of the guys here to take a look and see if any of this makes sense (https://www.pokerstrategy.com/forum/...50#post2746450).

As I say in the thread there are reasons why I can understand taking insurance:

1. Taking shots: where losing a stack may hurt a lot
2. Tilt reasons: when taking a bad beat might affect your game
3. Reducing variance

But surely that's it. Maybe I am confusing EV and winrate. It has to hurt your winrate, right? I have read a few insurance threads which all seem to indicate you should not take poker insurance and, to me, it just seems like paying the house more money. But do the guys in the linked thread have a point? I have seen guys take insurance in televised games but this is the first time I personally have had the opportunity to take it myself.

Any info would be very helpful

Thanks guys

if your EV is better without insurance than with it, then it hurts your winrate. no insurance ever offered is +EV for the one who takes it, it's just a question of how much do you lose on it. I've read the thread a bit and it seems like the loss of pot equity because of insurance is pretty small. in general this would be the formula (you don't lose anything if your hand loses and you don't pay insurance, you only pay insurance if you win):
(net profit - cost of insurance)*probability to win

while without insurance it's net profit*probability to win - net loss*(1 - probability to win)

you can take screenshots a couple of times it gets offered and actually track what happens if you win/lose and take it. if the loss of EV really is incredibly small, there are situations where you'd want to take it like moving up or playing a deep pot vs some player while there is a fish on the table who is also deep (this is kinda ICM-like). but if everyone is 100bb or no fishes with deep stacks and youre not shot-taking, then I wouldn't take it because it doesn't really do anything.

Many thanks for the quick reply. So based on what you say, the only reasons to take insurance would be the 3 reasons given in my OP, right? Insurance should almost definitely reduce the variance in PLO but will it reduce your profits is my main concern? I'll definitely take it once or twice to see how it affects everything but thanks again for the reply.

Cheers

under the condition that the loss of EV is reasonably small (that's why you need to know their exact scheme for this), number 1 is a valid reason. tilt reasons - if you tilt best quit the game. reducing variance - if you are rolled enough for a limit (let's say 100 BI) and you're looking very long-term, you want to maximize your winrate, you can take variance when it hits. so basically I'd take it when shot-taking and in a specific situation with stacks as described in my first post.

Ah, ok. Many thanks.

I would be surprised if poker room does not take at least small percentage of insurance.

Anyway what plo coach on twich was that?

Kyyberi a Finnish PLO coach, he posted his calculations on insurance in the thread I linked in my OP.

From reading the thread it was just one specific site (Natural 8 ?) that gave insurance at virtually even EV (amount still needed to be rounded to nearest cent so it was technically an advantage to the house). So the idea is when the cost of insurance (in terms of EV) is virtually zero, there's no reason not to take it. Variance reduction just automatically becomes more important. I never got the impression from the thread that anyone said simply taking insurance in itself is immediately +EV.

Its pretty reasonable to assume that some sort of offer in-game from the casino is automatically a bad bet, but I do think there are plenty of cases where a feature will be added that's beneficial to the players just to make the site more attractive.

Yes, most of the new chinese sites are all on the same network/same software etc... I'm thinking that, in specific scenarios, I might take it. Like md46135 mentioned earlier that I never really thought of, massive pots like we all know happen quite a lot in PLO like maybe 400BB+ pots and also, when there is a very deepstacked recreational player at the table. It doesn't seem to be the rip-off I thought it was. Maybe worth thinking about...Also I need to check if they change their rate in relation to how many outs villain has vs you. I saw this thread here on 2+2 regarding this that may be interesting, regarding this:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...cality-111367/