Ray's article.

[tolbiny]

"The more aggressive you play and the more aggressive the game, the more your stacks go up and down. That is easy to see"

several months after DavidRoss went pro he was playing 5-10 shorthanded online. In one of his posts he said that counterintuitively his varience was Decreasing as his aggression was increased.
Obviously there has to be a curve from a passive losing players vaience, to a passive winner, to an aggressive winner to an aggressive loser in terms of varience.

But supposing we took two players- 1 who took the more passive route of every ev neautral decsion, and one who took the more aggressive approach in those same situations (ie where call or raising could be equally prfitable- on would call, and one would raise). Would we see the aggressive player have a higher varience? Would his extra bets add to his fluctuations, or would they drive out players who would suck out on him decreasing his var.
any thoughts?

[The Dude]

If raising and calling are equal EV, but raising drives out other players thereby increasing your chances of winning the pot, then raising would decrease your variance. In general, though, this is not the case. The more you raise preflop, the more you put in marginal raises postflop, the greater your variance will be.

For example, I raise T9s in the CO or on the button after 3 or more limpers - most players do not. This creates a bigger pot that ties other opponents to marginal draws - which sometimes includes trapping me with a gutshot. I lose, on average, more when I miss in this situation than players who don't raise preflop and play well after that. But I win more, too.

Bigger wins when I hit and bigger losses when I miss turn into bigger overall variation.

[slavic]

which sometimes includes trapping me with a gutshot.

Oh yea, I've tied myself to a pot more than once doing this. After the hand you know you did the correct thing preflop and played it right postflop, but there is that little something that says, "What the hell did I just do?"

It's just pushing small edges.

[phish]

Actually, depending on the game, playing aggressively can actually help to reduce your variance. By being aggressive early in the hand, you may be knocking out players, which means you won't win as much when you make a big hand, but that you will win the pot more frequently. If you're a winning player, this can have the effect of reducing your variance.
Now this presupposes that your aggressiveness is not perceived as being on tilt (ie try to avoid being loose and aggressive) because then it may encourage others to play back at you, which will not only increase your variance, but also decrease you expectation.

[Victor]

As your winrate goes up your variance goes down in terms of percentage of winning sessions.

So if you are not playing enough +ev hands then playing more hands will certainly reduce your sessionwise variance.

This effect peaks at a certain +ev amount for a hand. For instance playing a hand that is +1BB/hand helps your winrate and your variance. But playing a hand that is +.0001 BB/ hand helps your winrate but hurts your variance.


So somewhere in the middle is a hand that balances it out. That hand uis different every hand.

[The Dude]

[ QUOTE ]
As your winrate goes up your variance goes down in terms of percentage of winning sessions.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is only true if your standard deviation doesn't change with your winrate. If you increase your winrate by playing more marginal hands and pushing aggressively very small edges, then your winrate will increase but so will your standard deviation. The result will be a higher overall variance, not a lower one.

Also, I don't understand your last comment.

[Victor]

I was saying the same as you just said.

Assume someone only plays 10% of their hands. Clearly, by adding more hands their winrate would improve.

Now look at someone playing 18% of their hands. They could play more hands and improve their winrate but their variance would rise since the hands they would be adding would be marginal.

I'm sure we agree on this.

My last comment is irrelevant in application. Basically, what I was trying to say is this: For every situation (position, amount of limpers, raised pot, table condititions etc.) there exists a minimal hand that increases your winrate but doesnt increase your variance.

For example, if you had an infinite pokertracker database of yourself. You might find that after 3 limpers on the button in a loose passive game you can raise QJs (or hand x) and suffer no increase in variance but only the minimal increase in winrate.

[The Dude]

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. We're on the same page.