OESFD .. always b3bai?

[ChipStorm]

[ QUOTE ]
I fail to see how this is lower Variance. True, it isn't your whole stack, but the variance on your flop call is still huge.

[/ QUOTE ]
You fail to see how variability of return differs between the options of calling and drawing, and folding if you miss, versus shoving your whole stack in the middle up front? Are you kidding?

[bilbo-san]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I fail to see how this is lower Variance. True, it isn't your whole stack, but the variance on your flop call is still huge.

[/ QUOTE ]
You fail to see how variability of return differs between the options of calling and drawing, and folding if you miss, versus shoving your whole stack in the middle up front? Are you kidding?

[/ QUOTE ]

So....Tell me how the $9.50 you put in to call does not have a high variance (on that $9.50). I'm very interested in your explanation of how this a low-variance investment of $9.50.

Edit: I'm perfectly clear that the rest of the money you invest when you hit is very low-variance. I'm saying your $9.50 call is high-variance. Therefore, your not really giving up variance, you are just choosing to apply it to less of your stack, at an EV cost.

[teamdonkey]

Poincaraux - several things affect my decision to b3bai or not

1. Position - if i'm OOP i lean towards getting it all in quickly, if in position i tend to want to see more cards first.

2. the board - many times your straight outs are well disguised. that's not the case here... a 7 or a 2 will put a very obvious straight on the board, limiting your implied odds. that makes me lean towards a push. also your flush draw is 9 high, meaning sometimes when you call and hit the flush you'll get stacked, which also makes me favor a push.

3. Opponent - you didn't give reads, but his check-raise isn't a horrible size, making me think he wont let you draw cheaply on the turn. If villain tends to make 1/2-2/3 pot sized bets postflop i'm much more inclined to wait.

4. Stack sizes - if you call here you'll have a $35 pot and he has $36 behind. Clearly you have non-existant implied odds on the river if there's any betting at all on the turn. If he had $150 behind, this hand looks a lot different.

Shoving your money in when you get big draws is easier, and always +EV. That doesn't always make it right. In this particular hand i play postflop the same as OP, but people saying a call on the flop is "horrible" are way off... it's also +EV, just not as much.


edit - forgot folding equity. The most influential factor is also the hardest to know. In theory if you know he calls a push 100% of the time, don't push (you have correct odds to draw and huge implied odds). If he folds 100% of the time, push. Since i rarely have a good enough read to estimate my fold equity, i usually just assume they fold about 1/3 of the time.

[poincaraux]

[ QUOTE ]
Poincaraux - several things affect my decision to b3bai or not

[/ QUOTE ]
Nice response. Thanks!

[ChipStorm]

[ QUOTE ]
So....Tell me how the $9.50 you put in to call does not have a high variance (on that $9.50). I'm very interested in your explanation of how this a low-variance investment of $9.50.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is simple statistics. The variance we are discussing is that of expected return on the hand, starting at the turn. There are two available courses of action, and two possible outcomes in each case. You can make some simple assumptions regarding what a villain may call on the river in the case where you don't push the turn, but this is simply a matter of doing the math for each scenario. If you look up the statistical definition of variance, and do an expected value calculation, and then a variance calculation, for each scenario, I assure you you will find that the push has greater variance.

[bilbo-san]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So....Tell me how the $9.50 you put in to call does not have a high variance (on that $9.50). I'm very interested in your explanation of how this a low-variance investment of $9.50.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is simple statistics. The variance we are discussing is that of expected return on the hand, starting at the turn. There are two available courses of action, and two possible outcomes in each case. You can make some simple assumptions regarding what a villain may call on the river in the case where you don't push the turn, but this is simply a matter of doing the math for each scenario. If you look up the statistical definition of variance, and do an expected value calculation, and then a variance calculation, for each scenario, I assure you you will find that the push has greater variance.

[/ QUOTE ]

The expected return and the variance are not the same thing.

Explain to me how $9.50 that goes in on the flop has a higher/lower variance than $100 that goes in on the flop if one were to push.

My point is that you get your expected return on your $9.50 almost exactly as often as you do on your stack (if you were to push).

So, again, on that $9.50, variance is pretty damn close to what it would on your stack, if you pushed.

Or are you saying that somehow paying $9.50 instead of your stack changes how often your hand becomes the winner, and how much variance is applied to that situation?

Let's phrase it more simply. If all you had left was $9.50, and you shoved it in, that variance on your $9.50 remaining stack is the same as the variance would be on Hero's $45 that he's pushing here. Why does the fact that you have money left change anything?

By the way, on an unrelated subject, I would also make the point that lower variance + lower EV just means that you get the lower EV more consistently, so I'm pretty unclear about the psychological benefits of lower-variance play.