[Ed Miller]

You're missing my point. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I claimed that poker is naturally variance rich and pushing a handful of small +EV situations isn't going to increase your variance noticably.

This is essentially my claim as well. As long as you are playing a fundamentally tight game, adding proper aggression should pump up your variance only a "notch" or two. At the very least, it will improve your winrate at the same time, mitigating the effect the increased variance will have on your ability to run bad.

Now playing in aggressive GAMES will increase your variance a fair bit. Playing in these games also (depending on the quality of the aggressive players) can cut your winrate a bit, leading to the double cold streak whammy of increased std. dev. and lower winrate.

Playing shorthanded will also bump up your variance.

I guess my point is this. The style you play isn't the major determiner of the size of your swings. It's whether you choose to play in the Mirage $20-$40 (a "docile" game) or the Party $15-$30 that plays a bigger role.