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