[Off Duty]

You're absolutely wrong.

P. 754 of Investments by Bodie, Kane and Marcus.

"Sharpe's measure devides average portfolio excess returns over the sample period by the standard deviation of the returns over that period. It measures the reward to (total) volatility trade-off.

Playing super tight certainly lowers your standard deviation, but at the expense of playing marginal hands in profitable situations.

Playing super loose is the opposite, increasing the standard deviation and playing marginal hands in less than profitable situations.

The object is to get your maximize your return to standard deviation ratio, thus maximizing your Sharpe ratio. Depending on the situation, that could mean a super nitty style or a super loose one. Depends on how high the variance is in the game. So once again, the right approach to the game is situational.

I knew all that crap I learned in MBA school and all those books I refused to throw away would come in handy one day.