Variance

[silvershade]

I'm pretty new to Stud, been playing around 3 weeks so far, read 7CSFAP and figure my game to be reasonable but not great. Anyway this is a general question as i dont have enough experience to answer on my own. So far in Stud i seem to run insanely hot or stone cold. In my first 10 days i went up 175bb and since then I've dropped 90. Obviously things are going well overall but I'm wondering if stud is normally so swingy?

Either way its entertaining in a way flop games arent for me so I guess I'll be playing for a while.

[Leavenfish]

What limit and structure are you playing? I find a lot lesser variance than many it seems when I play low ante/small bet ratio games and do not push marginally profitable hands.

---Leavenfish

[silvershade]

I'm rolled to play 2/4 but started at 0.5/1 over on Pokerroom ( 0.10 ante ), i'll move up once I'm comfortable with my play. The games are very loose so I guess that will be part of why I'm seeing big swings, big pots with lots of bad players who dont for the most part lay anything down no matter how unlikely a draw it might be. Even so its swingier than i've seen in loose hold'em for instance.

I guess maybe I can trim the variance if i stop pressing small edges, there's a lot of value on the table so maybe I can just play big draws and Aces up or better?

[Todd]

Regarding the variance, review your play from any session that you were down a large number of bets.

If you are mostly loosing when your two pair gets rivered by trips, (i.e. JJ66 looses to 555 on the river) no problems.

However, when I am having a crappy session, I find that in my review I am limping on 3rd with a lot of crappy holdings, like KQ/T rainbow or 58/8 things like this that can result in big problems.

I constantly review 7CSFAP and a lot of the calling suggestions for 3rd would meet a lot of resistance here for their looseness. I think that Mason (et al.) are writing for an advanced audience who know when to call mediocre holdings and play them profitably.

In that way Stud is quite different than HE, since there really are no 'hand groups' per se, and just about any hand can be playable, or unplayable depending on your position, your opponents, and the dead cards on the table.

For me, I have found hte variance to be quite big, but most of it come from pushing 2pr on 4th into a number of villians, and getting rivered. Or making a strt and getting rivered by a flush or boat.

So review you hand history, and post a couple (or a bunch) that you have questions about, or feel like you misplayed.

Todd

[Tha Stunna]

I get a ton of swings, even in very loose low limit games. If you do a lot of value betting with draws and then miss them, your money will drop quickly. Even with aces against any other pair, you will still lose a third of the time. It's easy to get rather tilted when some calls your raise with no pair, then catches a pair and then rivers trips to beat you , but it just happens.
Compared to hold em, there are probably more swings because there aren't shared cards. Any time someone beats your big pair with two pair from pairing a board card or two, that wouldn't have happened in hold em.

[FLPokerSux]

Unless you're talking about short-handed limit LAGfests, the variance of Stud High is way greater than Hold 'Em. Stud 8/b involves very modest variance, as long as you can learn not to put too much stock in high split pairs (including aces) at loose tables or against the very good opponents. Some would say Limit Omaha 8/b has less variance, but late board counterfeittings, late board pairings, and quarterings can deliver buy-in swings that can be quite brutal.