[jdl22]

Thank you for your comments.

With respect to the definition of risk neutrality you are correct. In poker books it is generally assumed that a player will choose a sufficiently small game for her bankroll so that she will be risk neutral when playing that game. If considering which game to buy into there are many players here, myself included, that would have a higher EV playing bigger games but don't have the roll. While we are making a rational risk averse decision in this essay I was considering risk preferences during actual play at the tables. So if you choose a level your bankroll can sustain then you are likely risk neutral if you play according to what is written. It may not be the case for various reasons which is why I wrote the article.

I struggled a bit with the NL part for risk averse players. The problem is that it's well established on these boards and based on experience that the ratio of win rate to variance is much higher for NL games. The reason most often given is that skill is more important in NL relative to luck. If you have the poker essays books Mason writes a good deal on the topic of NL vs limit and skill vs luck in poker in general. It would seem that would be good for risk averse players. The problem is that as a poker player you are facing the swings one hand at a time and they can be much larger in any NL game of comparable size. In other words when deciding what game to play a naive risk averse player would probably decide on NL, but when it comes time to actually sit down she would prefer limit.