Loose Games -EV?

[Xhad]

To add to this, I have to ask how many people in this thread are tournament players. After all, tournaments are where EV takes a back seat to short-term variance.

Have you ever played a no-limit tournament where your table can go two hours without a single hand ending preflop? I have. Can you win this tournament without catching amazing cards? Not unless it's a rebuy tournament and you push your good hands hard and manage to double up.

Real hand from a live tournament, the first hand of the day:

NL Hold-'em

Seat 1 post t25 small blind
Seat 2 post t50 big blind
Hero raises to t200
UTG+2 calls
UTG+3 raises all-in to t2500
UTG+4 calls all-in t2500
everyone else folds
Hero calls all-in t2500
UTG+2 calls all-in t2500

Board: K336A
Hero shows AA
UTG+2 shows KK
UTG+3 shows AJs
UTG+4 shows 55

(I know the overbet isn't exactly passive but I hope you see my point) Now, yes, this situation was very high EV, but not exactly low variance when those kinds of overbets get called. What happens when you have a run of bad cards and you can't even blind steal because people are willing to call a bet of 50 times the big blind with 55?

I have even played SNGs where I could have kept a decent stack by blind-stealing due to the excessive tightness of the table, except there was a donk to my right that was limping EVERY GODDAMN POT and then calling any kind of raise afterward, then calling pot-sized bets to the end with a gutshot draw he picked up with his 47o, so I had to at least wait for a hand that was better than trash, which I wasn't getting. And, yes, he will break out and lose in the long run, but for this tournament so far he has the kind of rush of cards you would expect if you made a pact with Satan, so he's the chip leader. Tell me how variance can have that kind of effect on a weak-tight game.

Now play this same tournament, only with weak-tight players. If you know what you're doing you should make the final table almost every time, the exceptions being when your desperation push runs into a big pair. The reason being that when you "need" a pot you can probably pick one up if you look to do so, meaning bad cards don't dicate your immediate fate, meaning skill matters more in the short run than it would in a loose game.

In a live game, you want loose-passive donks, but you can get sucked out time after time without winning a hand and get pretty stuck before the long run starts to kick in. In a game full of weak-tight players, you are less likely to get stuck (or break out of a tournament), but you won't win that much either.

[Bodhi]

Lower went to SD% or lower won $ at SD%? I'm not sure that either one is a direct indicator of 'swings.'

[Rudbaeck]

Standard Deviation - the measurement of swings.

[Zygote]

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Lower went to SD% or lower won $ at SD%? I'm not sure that either one is a direct indicator of 'swings.'

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wow. based on your posts, you really were in no place to attack me the way you did. i'm also still waiting for the psychology of poker excerpt?

Loose games are certainly not -EV, and the OP probably doesn't even believe thise either. There's always some situations where certain actions would yield certain results. Say you have TPMK in a loose game. You could raise and get called by worse hands and win the pot or you could raise and get sucked out on. In a tight game you could raise and get called by a better hand or bluff out another hand. In both games there's ways to win and ways to lose. You just have to rely on your good playing habits and reads either way. (Now... I know that was a gross simplification of the situations mentioned).

There's ALWAYS a way to make money in poker, you just have to figure it out.