Got it also yesterday, looks good yes, but have the same problem as you..need also a new PC..but import is a lot faster than with PT2...

omg what a table

So I take it this is why I saw you on Stars today?

QFT and QFLOL

Tables are rediculously good. Full ring. 3+ total-fish per table at 25NL. Let the sets rain down.

Wish I could

<----- @work

i'm done for the day. some success at 100NL this afternoon, yay!

25NL to relax when i got home from work. just plain silliness going on. 4 buyins in 1.25 hours (1100 hands). and i am positive this is sustainable with the current pool that is playing tonight.

Show me how it's done

Beginning to think I play at the worst time (euro evening time)

(About 25NL)
I doubt that, you play at the same time I do and 25NL has been surprisingly easy to beat, even when you get cold-decked half the time.

On a braggish note, all the premium hands I didn't get dealt at 25NL have pretty much cropped up for my 50NL shot. I have had them two to three times more often than simple statistics would allow.

I think I shouldn't complain if you take into consideration that the deck has had ice on it this month and I'm up 6BIs.

Ran super hot last night, 23% WTSD and 18% W$SD . -1.5 BIs but could have been a lot worse if I had not kept my cool.

Did anyone else experience the 3bet frenzy at NL25 yesterday? It was so ridiculous.

I can never say I run bad ever...this drug dealer came to the Taj today when I randomly got out early and I won 3k in the 2-5 game ...he literally dropped 10k throughout the night.

This is the thing I don't get. The good poker player should LOVE variance, for two reasons.

1. We leverage variance to take advantage of opponents who are willing to more or less directly pay us money to avoid it.
2. Variance is THE ENTIRE REASON PEOPLE WHO SUCK AT POKER ARE WILLING TO LOSE MONEY TO US. It's the thrill of the gamble to them. They love calling down to the river and catching their gutshot to beat our set or aces. And they're willing to overpay to try to do it, time and time again, because they're not trying to make money, they're paying for the thrill. Remember: The fish that just sucked out on your AA with his king-ten offsuit is a happy fish, and happy fish stick around and lose money. Long term thinking, people.

Write it 1000 times on the chalkboard: VARIANCE IS OUR FRIEND.

Exactly. Either an action is +EV or it is not.

yeah zeth, its a good thing B/C when they do catch those 2 outers or G-shots on the turn or river it keeps them fish alive for longer and gives them false re-enforced learning. 'I call down G-shot and I win monies = excelent play'

I had AQ, and iirc, I also had the back-door nfd, although that may have been a different hand.

Thats the best time to play imo... on Pokerstars at least.

Makes perfect sense. No way I could have gotten you off TP in that spot. I'm pretty sure you would have laid down a jack, although not with ease.

Humorous fact: when that hand played out, I had already searched for a better table. I'm pretty sure I don't need a 2p2 reg in my blinds.

Seriously, start a thread about this in Internet Poker like I did:

FTP closes some random account because they think I'm multi-accounting


FTP's support is completely incompetent, however they do sit up and take notice when a 2+2 mod starts a thread bitching about them in a forum like The Zoo.


Note: Can't guarantee you won't be doomswitched for life

not sure why you say this unless you don't understand math. The less the confidence level on if we are ahead or not variance in the play increases. Some people refer to this as Beta.

an action is actually only EV when we are playing against nature...I think all most every one on this forum do not understand this. As we get into multiplayer games EV only set the intersection if all the players play equal strategy.

We see this all the time in calculating what a villains range is, and we guess on what their strategy is on that range. But in reality we are estimating the range and strategy. They could be implementing something entirely different which either increases the EV or decreases the EV.

It is very possible for a "high variance" play and a "low variance" play to be of (about) equal EV. Especially since we're often estimating EV (ranges).

But, yeah, often when people say something like this, they're celticchef.

Would be a low variance game playing your big pairs a bit more safe (as an example)?

What are the pre's of high variance game? What is the downside?
What are the pre's of a low variance game? and what is the downside?

The Australian Lottery problem people posted here (although they made some fundamental mistakes) is an example of one. Buying a lottery ticket was +EV, but had close to the same +EV as buying AUS Treasury bond. (taking into the account that the lottery was paid out over a 25 year period) But one was much higher variance.

The group of individuals who tried to buy all the lottery tickets, actually only made a good profit because they Failed in there strategy. Logistic issues made it impossible for them to buy the number of tickets they required, and they purchased 1/6 of the target, but still won.

I think that the positives to high and low variance games are mainly psychological if we are playing with a proper BR.

Of course, there is a better chance that you run just terrible and have to move down playing high variance. But if you play high variance, you obviously need to increase the size of your BR due to an increase in standard deviation to compensate for your style.

So yeah, it's basically psychological to me. When you hit those more likely swongs in a high variance game, your confidence is going to take a hit more often.

I would tend to think though that theoretically, high variance in a perfect vacuum is probably closer to optimal poker than low variance as you are generally trying to get stacks in in more marginal situations where you have a small edge so you are effectively maximizing EV every time.

But outside of a perfect vacuum, I'm not sure if you could really tell the difference irl in the long run.

I was speaking on a case by case basis, especially on hands where we're doing a lot of estimating (ie; ranges). As Sammy put it, a low confidence level.

I don't think you can have a general, low variance strategy without sacrificing a bunch of EV. You can see this in the progression of nit vs TAG vs sLAG vs LAG. Lowering short-term variance, generally, also sacrifices EV and win rate. Which in turn increases long term variance (higher win rate means you are much less likely to have long downswings). And as the skill of players converges, small edges become more and more important.

The only places we can really "cheat" this is where the EV of the "high" and "low" variance options are essentially equivalent due to the margin of error brought about by our estimations (ie; we don't have good reads and/or we're not good at making reads). The better the player, the less often these situations should occur (better at making reads, more likely to have reads). a poor player may find themselves in these spots frequently, however, they're unlikely to be able to recognize them.

So this whole issue is of very limited usefulness. Good players aren't going to find themselves in spots where reducing variance is appropriate very often and bad players are unlikely to be able to make use of this at all.

By far the most effective way to decrease long term variance is to increase your win rate. Depending on a ton of specifics, this may or may not involve an increase in short-term variance.

Okay, I get it

So improve, improve & improve