mulit tabling vs 1 table

[CallYNotRaise06]

not sure if this is the correct spot for this post...

generally, which carries less variance 3 or 4 tabling lower limit games, or 1 tabling the highest limit your br can afford? i think i can make more mulit-tabling, but when im runnin a little cold there are some big swings.

thanks

[AaronBrown]

Assuming you play equally well when multitabling, you should have lower variance with more smaller games.

[xwillience]

your using variance and limits incorrectly... when u have more money at stake you will naturally have higher variance (i.e. i lost 100 at the 5/10 table vs i lost 20 at the 1/2 table).. however remove the $ and add BB instead and u have the exact same results -10bb if you play equally at all limits then u will lose some EV when multitabling but will make up for it with an increase in hands played.. as for the variance you will naturally have larger swings when you have $400 spread out accross 4 2/4 games as opposed to 150 at one 3/6 game... does that make sense... i hope so

[Guernica4000]

Another thing to take into consideration is that your BR requirements do not increase when multi-tabling but they do when you increase limits.

For example if you use the rule of a 300bb bankroll. You could play one or many 3/6 tables but if you want to play (one or many) at 10/20 you would need a BR of $6000.

[Pog0]

Assuming you play equally well multitabling as you do single tabling, varience is the same in both if your measurement of time is hands played rather than hours spent playing. The reason people say that you have lower varience multitabling is because the shorter the session, the larger the varience.

if you play 100k hands, although your varience is high over each individual session, if you count the 100k hand session as a whole, your return will be relatively close to your winrate (random guess would be True winrate +/- 1 BB/100, while over 10k hands you would have your True winrate +/- 3 BB/100).

The only way to decrease varience (and it doesn't really decrease varience but rather deem it less significant) is to play more hands. Multitabling you will make varience less significant in less time.

Best to think in terms of hands rather than time.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

4-tabling 2/4 does not require the same bankroll as 1-tabling 8/16. No matter how many tables you play simultaneously, your bankroll needs are the same as they would be for one table.

Variance is a function of number of hands, not of time.

[CallYNotRaise06]

thanks for the replies... just wondering does anyone know how to calculate your variance? or a previous post that could explain how?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

variance = standard deviation. get a stats geek to show you how to calculate SD.

[AaronBrown]

Technically, variance is standard deviation squared.

The variance is the expected squared deviation from the mean. Suppose you average +2 BB/100 hands. Your results for three 100 hand sessions are +3 BB, -2 BB, +5 BB. The first is +1 over your mean, the second is -4, the third is +3. Square these numbers to get 1, 16 and 9. Add them up to get 26. Divide by 2 (sometimes people divide by 3 instead, but it doesn't make much difference over thousands of hands, which is what you need for a reliable standard deviation anyway, so don't worry about it) to get 13. That's the variance (technically, an estimate of the true variance, if you divided by 3 you would get the sample or population variance). The square root of 13, 3.61 BB, is your standard deviation.

[CallYNotRaise06]

thanks alot aaron

[dana33]

[ QUOTE ]
Variance is a function of number of hands, not of time.

[/ QUOTE ]
Variance and EV can be calculated as a function of either number of hands or time. Variance per hour is more relevant to the OPs question in that the expectation per hour is the same in the two cases (assuming equal win rates in BB/100 at the two levels), while the variance per hour is reduced by half when 4-tabling at the lower stakes.

[dana33]

[ QUOTE ]
...while the variance per hour is reduced by half when 4-tabling at the lower stakes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Correction: it's the standard deviation, not the variance, that is reduced by half.