Weird Question about Variance?

I know that "over time, a winning strategy will win," but I was just thinking of something and I wonder if anyone else has looked into it.



Variance is a necessary evil in poker, everyone has seen it. When AA gets beat by 72 it seems like the deck is stacked against us and blah blah blah. It's just expected variance.


My question is, since we do not live in a perfect world, anyone who is only putting their money in while they are ahead will ONLY experience the bad side of variance. Is that not a bad thing to be doing? Assuming that you are ALWAYS ahead when you get your money in, you will lose with the best hands some times, but never win with the worst hands (because you dont play them). So you will have a below-expected outcome, since you are not seeing the positive side of variance, ever. You will only be winning the percentage of hands you should win MINUS your bad beats. I hope that makes sense, I can elaborate if needed.


Anyone have any ideas?

Let's take one hand as an example. AA has about 88% equity against 72 offsuit.

If you put AA up against 72 offsuit a million times, the result will almost always be that AA wins very close to 88% of the time.

But if you pick a stretch of 100 hands out of that million, it would not be surprising to see AA win 93% of the time, or 83% of the time. This is variance.

Now suppose I always have 72 offsuit, and you always have AA. Stinks for me. During some 100 hand segments of that million hand sample, I will experience positive variance, meaning I will lose less money than I expected to. During other segments, I will lose more than I expected to.

I always have the worst hand, and you always have the best one. You will always win in the long run. But we both experience both positive and negative variance in small samples.

You are correct to think that you can only suffer a bad beat if you are ahead, but suffering a bad beat is not the same thing as variance. Variance is suffering more bad beats, or less bad beats, in a small sample than one would suffer in a large sample.

It's impossible to only get in with the best hand always unless you only play AA....

Alex the Owl has the perfect example of variance and how both players experience it. AA always comes out ahead - in the long run. In a 3 hour session recently, I had AA four times and lost three of them. I had KK, QQ, and JJ - and they all lost. Negative variance drove me out of the poker room - that afternoon. But, given the choice, I will take AA in the pocket every time over any other two cards.

Someone who consistently plays weak hands can only hope to win those hands a small percentage of the time, compared to players who get their money into the pot with good hands. That weak player is putting dead money into the pot. When they win with their weak hands, they are experiencing positive variance, and this reinforces their playing style. Keep it up!! The negative variance will dominate their game, making them long-term losers.
I play in a home game with some very weak players. Week after week they drop large sums of money. Then, one week they win big, maybe enough to cover 1/3 of their loses over the last month. They go home happy, confident that they can win big playing any two cards from any position. I hope they come back next week. Positive variance is on my side.

Variance are all circumstances involving the game in order to change the expected outcome but if you analyze well you will notice performance charts where you hardly notice the variance. even though certain bad hands have gained better hands, in much of the time you will notice that your monster hand is no longer the favorite, so staying with it will not be a simple matter of variance but a lack of skill.

Op kinda has a point. I remember reading something about this in Doyle Bronsons super system 2. The key here is the power of agression. A laggy player (sometimes even donks) will pick up a lot of chips with marginal hands, sometimes unchallenged. When finally someone get a hand to challenge the lag (donk?), he already has a lot of chips. When the tag get his KK in vs the lag A3, he is only a 70 to 30 % favorite. If KK holds up they may be back were they startet, and if A3 wins (like he should/will do sometimes), he increases his stack. I think Doyle Bronson wrote that the lag is actually freerolling the tag in these situations (as the tag will only get his "own" chips back if his hand hold up).

The point Im trying to make is not that you should try to get your stack in as a underdog, but if you "always" get your stack in as a big favorite you may be playing to tight.




My 2 cents


Sprockett

This is a really weird question indeed since the only way you will always put your money in favorite is If You only play AA and get it in preflop.
Else it's Impossible to never get it at least KK vs AA and win sometime, so you will see that good part of variance.

I tend to believe high-end players who write books, give tables of hand strength, calculated it mathematically.

Yes another online pro 'shaun deeb said a similar thing;if you are always getting it in good you are not getting it in enough.

Hey. As I understand it, you say that if you play according to the chances of the bank, then you will never crush your opponent's hands? I also thought about it, but there are other moments. When you make a cold call with 54s against an AA, and a flop A67. You raise and on a turn come 3. This will happen to you often. Look. Before the flop, you had only 21.10% to win. The flop is 27.10%. It turns out the opponent was always ahead of you, but you destroyed his hand on the turn. If you are in his place, what will it be?

I think I'm following. To answer your question (assuming I'm reading it right). This is exactly why NITTY players, and some TAGs are just break even players. Making something out of nothing is what really makes you money. Waiting around for a "playable" hand means your missing a lot of opportunities. That's why I personal like to put a value to my range....

If I'm on the button with 54s in a low stakes game where everyone limps. I'm limpping too. I'm getting odds to call with almost anything. Now lets say I'm at a higher stakes table where no one limps, and like to resteal from the blinds. It folds around to me, I'm folding my 54s and waiting for a better spot....

I hope that helps.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean. I don't mean that you only play AA, as a few people have interpreted it as. I mean if someone ALWAYS gets their money in good. Only playing premiums in position and only putting money in when you hit. Although, statistically, you will win more often than not, you will never, ever, ever hit the true odds of the outcome because you are only seeing negative variance in these situations, since you are only playing positions where you CANNOT draw out or cooler someone.

I think this is a better way to give an example: Say you are a 60-40 favorite every time you bet. You're playing in good spots that you have an edge in.

The problem is, you will NEVER get the maximum possible value over the long run. You will win the hands you were supposed to win, which is great. You will also sometimes lose hands you were supposed to win, which is unfortunate. My point is that this losing is never, ever offset by winning with worse hands. That's the thing about variance. Variance is accepted, and sometimes loved, because it goes both ways.

For every person that has drawn a straight on you, you have the opportunity to draw the straight on them. UNLESS YOU DONT EVER PLAY THAT OPPORTUNITY.

Hopefully this clears my question up a bit.

In a large sample your outcome will very likely be similar to the true odds. If you have a forty percent chance of losing, you will lose about forty percent of the time.

You will see both negative and positive variance in small samples. If your true odds are a forty percent chance of losing, don't be surprised if you lose only thirty-five percent of the time (positive variance) or forty-five percent of the time (negative variance) in a sample of one hundred hands.

Whether you are ahead or behind has nothing to do with the type or amount of variance you experience.

How much value you get is mostly dependent on how you play the hands - when to bet, and how much to bet. This has nothing to do with variance.

Over the long term, you will probably win approximately the number of hands you were supposed to win, and lose approximately the number of hands you were supposed to lose.

"Supposed to win" is a strange phrase to apply to an individual hand. You may be favored to win a hand, but you are not "supposed to win". When you are ahead 60/40, you are supposed to lose forty percent of the time. You seem to be using "supposed to win" instead of "favored to win". They mean different things.

You seem to think your forty percent chance of losing is "variance". It is not. If you look back at your last ten 60/40 situations, and you won six of them, then there is no variance in that sample. If you won all ten hands, that is variance, even though you were ahead in every hand.


Certainly you should play speculative hands when fold equity, pot odds, and implied odds justify it. But that has nothing to do with variance.

I agree , The only way variance can apply , is AA v One player all in preflop. No one plays the same cards , the same way . If your in front at any stage of a hand and get your stack in then , the only variance you see is negative . Dosnt matter what sort of hand sample you look at . If you have a negative variance doing this the game is rigged .

Maybe the author means that if you are too tight player you will sometimes loose with your premium hands and will not be able to win with some weaker hands. That is true and that's why nobody who tries to play well plays just category 1 and 2 hands for example regardless of everything else. Your position on the table, behavior of players before you and finally your cards should all be part of the final decision what to do in the specific situation. Balance is the key. Neither too tight players nor those who believe that "every hand can win or loose" are those who will be ahead in the final.