Weak Tight Dreams

[Dunkman]

A couple things...first I felt the same way when I started (I'm an econometrician, so I tend to look at things in a similar fashion.) For instance, the aggressive play netting .02 EV and folding netting 0. From what I understand, once you get up to higher limits, a 2BB/100 is a very respectable winrate. That reduces to .02BB/hand. That tiny little edge is really all you have over the long run, so you can't afford to give it up.

As far as the EV of 1 vs. 1.01 with a higher variance, over the course of hundreds of thousands of hands the variance will take care of itself, and if you have a sufficient bankroll then you can afford to squeeze every small bit of +EV out of a hand. I think somewhere in SSHE (or maybe another book I've read) it does briefly mention the fact that if you are playing above you're roll that some plays could be played differently, as while the aggresive style of play does substantially increase variance, it also substantially increases winrate. Look, you can beat a .25/.50 game playing weak/tight, because you'll still take money from the loose/weak and maniac players. Like SSHE says, we don't want you to just beat small stakes games, we want you to crush them. Playing aggresive, lets say your upswing would be 400 BB, whereas with TPP play it may be 200 BB. AT the same point, lets say your downswing would be 200 BB (of course downswing is smaller, these games are very beatable) whereas playing TPP it would be 100BB. Those are rough, meaningless numbers, but I think they fairly represent what you are giving up over the long run.

Finally, concerning bankroll, my understand is that the 300BB bankroll is what most people use for live play. The bankroll size I hear most commonly for online play is 1000BB, due to multitabling and the vast number of hands that get played (if you're playing bad a day/week your gonna play 10x as many hands as you would live, and thus stand to lose much more.) That may not be totally necessary for these small stakes games, but to counter the variance at higher levels that the number I usually hear.

[tehox]

Hey borges, the more you play you will realize that 100bb is like really really insignificant. It is hard to accept at first but you will get used to it eventually.

I think you are thinking about the problem in the wrong way a little bit. You should always be making +EV plays, the problem is figuring out what is or isn't +EV. Some are really easy, some take time to figure out, and are very player and situation dependent. So at times it is ok to be "weak-tight" because you are uncertain whether it is a +EV play for you.

With all that being said, sometimes I too go into a little weak tight mode, especially if I have been running bad. Now that doesn't mean I don't push big edges, but I will avoid small ones, like stealing/defending with marginalish type hands, or raising/3betting to isolate with hands that I normally would. Maybe I'm giving up a little bit, but not much, and I do so because psychologically it avoids me from going on tilt. Additionally when I'm running bad, in a big downswing, I won't be playing optimally, so I avoid marginal situations where I'm afraid that b/c I'm playing bad, they just went from +EV to -EV.

Finally, we all play for our own reasons and you should play whatever you're comfortable with. But if you're going to try to move up in limits and be a winning player, you're going to have to embrace high variance, +EV plays, b/c they make up a big portion of the money that you can make, because there are less and less players that are just going to be retarded and give you a lot of action just when you have big hands.