On the button with suited connectors in LPLLHE
Hi folks,
This hand came up on the 5-10 in Halifax and has been bugging me ever since. On the button with T9 suited five people have limped in so I call and the blinds check. The flop comes 369 nothing suited. The table has been very loose passive and the whole table checks around to me. What do I do? Check for the free card and hope to improve or catch a blank card on the turn. Bet out and have the whole table call for any variety of draws? Both choices have their downsides and nothing I can think of feels right in this situation. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks Paul
This hand came up on the 5-10 in Halifax and has been bugging me ever since. On the button with T9 suited five people have limped in so I call and the blinds check. The flop comes 369 nothing suited. The table has been very loose passive and the whole table checks around to me. What do I do? Check for the free card and hope to improve or catch a blank card on the turn. Bet out and have the whole table call for any variety of draws? Both choices have their downsides and nothing I can think of feels right in this situation. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks Paul
Comments
By betting, you force gutshots draws, overcard hands, two pair draws and pocket pairs to call unprofitably.
By checking, you give them all those hands free shot to beat you.
Seems like a no-brainer bet against a passive table.
if you check you have no idea where you are in the hand when other cards fall, you give backdoor flushes a free card, etc, etc
The variance WILL be high in a game like that, but that doesn't mean it's unprofitable. If you're only going to bet the nuts in these games you're passing up value. Your hand in question might only win half the time vs. all the draws (or possibly less), but you're getting in 5 extra bets for every 1 you have to invest and you have greater than a 20% chance to win the pot. Sounds +EV to me. Remember, sometimes you'll even get a good card for your hand on the turn (another T), and people then might not be willing to call your bet, so you missed out on those 5 bets earlier.
In this case you have every reason to believe you are the best. Bet.
Low-limit games are usually HIGH variance. This is because nobody ever folds. Note, however, that when measured in big-bets/hour they are also the most profitable. Fasten yor seatbelt, though, it's gonna get bumpy.
Ive always felt low limit hold'em to be lower variance then the higher limits because of the higher win rate. If your only a 1bb/hour winner, your much more likely to go on a monster downswing, then say if you were a 2bb/hour.
I also think the agressive nature of the higher limits adds to the variance while the passivity of the smaller stakes has the opposite effect.
I do agree that the no fold'em hold'em does add variance, but from my experience (I dont have any concrete numbers besides my own personal lack of big downswings in the smaller stakes) it just seems that low limit hold'em is a lower variance game then the higher games.
in terms of pots won and lost...small stakes would have higher variance...you win less of the pots you enter...
in terms of your bankroll...higher stakes would have higher variance because your arent winning as much money (although your ratio of pots won to pots lost is probably better) because you arent getting the same overlay from the donks while pushing smaller edges.
thoughts?
In the latter sense, low limit games have higher variance.
Indirectly, winning a lower percentage of pots contributes to a higher variance. The direct mathematical reason that bankroll variance is higher (measured in big bets) in low limit games is that the pots you win are larger (in terms of big bets) on average in low limit games.
ScottyZ
I was speaking solely in terms of big bets. Not dollar values. I realize that you are winning less pots (but bigger ones...in terms of big bets) at smaller stakes. I just dont feel that the highly contested nature of showdowns at the low limits brings the variance higher then mid/high stakes games which suffer from smaller winrates and stronger agression.
Let's say that a typical low-limit game has average pot size of around 12 times the big blind, wheras a higher limit game has average pot size around 8 big blinds.
A typical orbit might be represented something like
Low-limit: -1, -1, 0, 0, -3, +10, 0, 0, -2, -1
Higher limit: -1, -1, 0, 0, -4, +6, 0, 0, -3, 0
The variance of the first sequence is (1+1+9+100+4+1) / 10 = 11.6
The variance of the second sequence is (1+1+16+36+9) / 10 = 6.3
Notice how the pot you won dominates the variance calculation in each case.
A good rule of thumb is: higher average pot = higher variance.
Oh yeah, why do pots contain more bets in low-limit poker? As Dave already noted:
ScottyZ
> varaince.
It's like the stock market, the higher your "risk" the greater your gain.
Any 2 BB win rate is, by definition, higher variance than a 1 BB win rate.
Is that not right ScottyZ?
I also think your overstating the difference in average pot sizes. Â Looking right now at the party 50c/1 game, the majority of games are hovering around 8BB. Â While looking at the party 15/30 game, the average is about 6BB. Â So perhaps the gap in your wins (+10 for the small stakes game, only +6 for the higher stakes) be something smaller (like +8 and +6)
I get that the larger pot sizes of the smaller stakes creates greater outliers causing more deviation from the mean. Â Im still just not convinced that small stakes game have more variance...in terms of the bb upswings and downswings of my bankroll. Â
Once again, I am totally speaking from a lay mans instinct here as I am not statistically gifted. Â I really wish I could offer up something more concrete, other then my intuition. Â
im not so sure about that.......suppose we have two games...
SCENARIO 1: suppose i offer you a coin flipping game where every time the coin lands heads or tails, you win... 0.2BB...giving you a 2BB win rate/10 "hands"
SCENARIO 2: suppose i offer you a ten sided dice...1-9...you lose 1bb...on a 10 you win 10bb...giving you a 1bb win rate/10 "hands"
if we were to use Scotty Zs example and played these two scenarios out...the line would look...
SCENARIO 1: .2, .2, .2, .2, .2, .2, .2, .2, .2, .2 leading to a variance of 0.4/10 = 0.04
SCNEARIO 2: -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 1, +10 leading to a variance of 109/10 = 10.9
The higher win rate scenario has lower variance then the lower winrate scenario...or am I misusing ScottyZs formula? Or is there something fundamentally flawed in my reasoning or math? =/
I will admit however, this does seem to lend credence to ScottyZs arguement that pot size is the overriding factor.
How about this (changes in bold):
Low-limit: -1, -1, 0, 0, -3, +8, 0, 0, -2, -1
Higher limit: -1, -1, 0, 0, -4, +6, 0, 0, -3, 0
The variance of the first sequence is (1+1+9+64+4+1) / 10 = 8.1
The variance of the second sequence is (1+1+16+36+9) / 10 = 6.3
In the stock market, the risk-return relationship arises due to investor behavior. If you ever1 hear a Finance geek talk about something called the Sharpe ratio, this is what he/she is talking about.
Poker is quite a different story. There isn't going to be a very strong relationship between risk and return since poker players (for the most part) do not behave like Sharpe ratio-style investors.
For example, many poker players (aka the long term losing players) will make the decision to play poker when not playing is a financially superior decision. In fact, they are doubly going against Sharpe ratio thinking because they are chosing a lower return, higher variance investment than doing nothing at all with their money.
Even most winning poker players fail to study (in the sense of finance) the risk-return nature of the game. They will simply play the highest limit they believe they are successful at. It's a rare bird that is carefully weighing the bankroll risks, as well as the returns.
Win rate, IMO, is pretty much negligible in terms of poker variance. A typical hourly (or per 100 hands) standard deviation is usually a full order of magnitude larger than one's win rate. If you prefer to think of variance = (standard deviation)^2, you've got 2 orders of magnitude difference, since 10^2 = 100.
It's really a matter of thinking carefully about cause and effect. I believe that neither high win rate causes high variance, nor vice versa. It's your opponents playing poorly that causes both of these things.
ScottyZ
1Brace yourself. It might be happening right now.
I suppose I was implicitly assuming that the win rate in my numerical examples was 0. Bankroll variation should be measured using deviations from the expected win.
For Scenario 1, your expected win rate is 0.2bb per coin toss. The variance of this game is 0 because your true win is always equal to your expected win.
ScottyZ
You still have the low limit player investing more bets into the pot. Â The higher limit player is investing more bets because he is going to showdowns more often for more raises and 3bets then the lower limit player is.
Low limit: -1, -1, 0, 0, -3, +8, 0, 0, -2, -1 Â
High Limit: -1, -1, 0, 0, -4, +6, 0, 0, +5, 0
The variance of the first sequence  (1+1+9+64+4+1) / 10 = 8.1
The variance of the second sequence (1+1+16+36+25)/10 = 7.9
The difference is negligible. Â I just dont think this sort of analysis is helpful without having a way of making the sequences truly representative of the games we are talking about. Â
I simulated the low-limit player limping in to the pot one more time than the high-limit player (hand #10). Also, I tried to represent the high-limit player putting more bets into the pot he plays (as you are suggesting) in hands #5 and #9
In your most recent example, you have the high limit player winning 20% of the pots he is dealt into wheras the low limit player wins 10%. This, I think, is too large a disparity.
ScottyZ
i agree that the disparity is too large...but how do we go about making two sequences that are more respresentative?
I suppose we would need a larger sequences. Simulating only one orbit, we can only get increments of 10%. In terms of pots won, only 10% seems reasonable (rather than 0% or 20%) in a 10-player game.
If we wanted to (say) have the high limit player win 9% of his pots and the low limit player win 7% of his pots, we'd need a sequence of 100 sample hands.
ScottyZ
i agree...a sequence of 100 would be most helpful...
heres what I think a sequence should reflect...
1. VP$IP ...
a decent tag at low limits is probably playing 22% of hands while at high limits, the tag is playing about 20% of hands.
2. Blinds ...
im not sure if this will affect variance either way, but the high limit player isnt getting as many free rides and is often investing more bets in defending their blind. so every 1st and 2nd hand should really have a slightly higher value for the higher limit game. if were talking in sb... the small stakes game should be 1 and 2 while the high stakes blinds in the sequence should be something 1.2 2.2...but i guess thats kinda nit picky.
3. Ratio of Bets Invested ...
this one is hard to quantify...im gonna take a look at my brothers 1/2 pokertracker database and compare it with my own and see if i can find something substantial.
4. Win percentage at showdown...
winning a pot is going to deviate us from the mean more then when we lose a pot...on average, youll win more pots in the higher stakes game then the lower...but the smaller stakes game will win a bigger pot which leads to...
5. Pot size comparison...
i guess we can just take the avg pot size of a typical table for this
Im gonna mess around with my database and my brothers database and see what I come up with. It seems ive bitten off more then i intended...but it is a very interesting arguement.