[TNixon]

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Tnixon , it looks like you've smartened up

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How so? There's nothing in that post that I hadn't already tried to say a million times by appealing to logic rather than laying out the math. The only difference is that I finally added the math to prove it. (and finally understood the math well enough to lay it out) So in a way, I did smarten up, but not in the way you seem to be suggesting. If you were in disagreement with me before, then you should still be in disagreement, because there's not a single point on which I've changed my position. In fact, I did specifically say a number of times that any amount of confusion that was going on would be cleared up instantly if you guys simply did the variance calculations in dollars instead of big blinds, which would have immediately pointed out that there really was a unit conversion problem going on when trying to directly compare variance calculation results for the $100 10BB stack against the $100 100BB stack.

If you believe we are now in agreement, then either you have changed your position, or you did not understand what I was attempting to say before. Which would be exceedingly surprising, since I tried about a million and a half different ways of saying the same thing.

But do you at least understand now why you can't "simplify" the 10BB vs 100BB problem by shuffling around the values of the blinds, and saying that a $10 10BB stack is the same as a $100 10BB stack when comparing to a $100 100BB stack, just to make it easier to figure out what's going on? That the simplification changes the results so drastically that it's impossible to draw any conclusions?

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One thing is certain which is that your $/h will be greater playing in a cash game

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I'm not sure that's really at all certain. Depending on whether 'h' means hand or hour in this context, it could be very difficult to compare, but I've heard a 10bb/100h figure being tossed about as a "good" winrate at cash, which would lead to somewhere around $20/hr at a .5/1 cash game, buying in for $100. I don't know if 10bb/100 hands is actually good or not, but that's what's been tossed about.

The "good winrate" number that gets thrown around for husngs is 60%, which can very easily lead to making a buyin an hour single-tabling turbos, or $100 an hour playing the same $100 at sit-n-gos instead of cash.

If by "h" you meant "hand", then the comparison is a bit more difficult to draw, but I'm still not sure it's all that certain. On full tilt turbos, blinds reach 100/200 after 24 minutes. It's *very* rare for a game to last this long (I think it's happened to me maybe twice), but even if it does last this long, there have probably only been somewhere around 80 hands. Which, with a 60% winrate, puts you somewhere around $0.25/hand at a $100 buyin level (yes, I know there is no $100 buyin level for turbos, that they only come in the $110 variety, but lets not make things more difficult than they have to be), compared to the $0.10/hand of a 10BB/hundred cash winrate at $100NL (I really wish I had any idea of whether this was actually a decent winrate. Somehow I don't think 10bb/hundred indicates anywhere near the edge that a 60% winrate at sngs does, but I don't know what else to use). And I believe this $0.25/hand can be viewed as a minimum. It will be much higher for shorter games (which most are).

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One thing is certain which is that your $/h will be greater playing in a cash game . This leads us to believe that your variance should be lower .

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Explain please? I'm not sure I understand how $/h has any bearing on the variance at all. Almost by definition, the only things that can possibly affect variance are pot sizes (both average and real pot sizes) and how often you win those pots. It is certainly possible for 2 play styles to make the same average $/h, but have vastly different variance figures.

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A $100 sng is higher variance than a cash game with a $100 buy in and blinds at 4/3 ,2/3 .

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I don't understand this sentence, unless by 4/3 and 2/3 you mean blinds of $1.33 and $.66. If that's what you mean, then yes, the sng would likely be higher variance, because the blinds in the sng increase, but the blinds in the cash game stay the same.

And I believe it would be safe to say that $100 .5/1 blinds would be lower variance than $100 .66/1.33 blinds, even though you are technically "deeper" stacked, in the same way, and for the same reasons, that the math appeared to show that $100 .5/1 blinds actually has the potential to be lower variance than playing $10 at the same blind levels.

(I say "appeared", because I didn't actually check stacksizes at the tables, just the average pot size. For all I know, many of those tables could have had small effective stacks)

You're potentially risking the same amount ($100), but since average pots are generally built up in increments of big blinds, the average pot (in $), would likely be lower at .5/1 blinds.

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I will repeat this again . A $100 sng is higher variance than a cash game with a $100 buy in and blinds at 4/3 ,2/3 .

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You do realize that this is the point I was trying to make all along, right? That unless there are other factors that only become apparent in cash games (and there are certainly possibilities), that SNGs should be higher variance than cash games? And that this is exactly why it was so important to clarify the 10BB vs 100BB issue that blew the thread out into a massive flamefest in the first place?

In fact, the whole point of the original post was to try to get a discussion going about whether conventional wisdom (which says that cash games are higher variance than sngs) is correct, and if so, why, because there don't really seem to be any factors in favor of sngs being lower variance.

Originally, I suspected that they should be pretty close to the same, with factors in one direction being offset by contrasting factors in the other. (for example, in sngs, you're never playing for a double stack, but in cash tables, the blinds don't increase)

After everything that's been said, I'm fairly convinced that cash play is actually *lower* variance than SNGs, which is exactly opposite from "common knowledge".

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3 $33 tables definitely has less variance than 1 $100 buy in cash game.

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Yes...

Which would be important if we were trying to compare $100 cash sessions to $33 sng tables.

Since we're actually trying to compare $100 cash sessions to $100 sng tables, you're going to have to help me out here and explain what you meant. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]