Comparing WLLH 3rd edition to 2nd edition

[oreopimp]

Good post.

You need to get to a point where, winning or losing is not what you are thinking about when sitting down at a table. When u sit at a table...dont "expect" anything, just sit and down and every hand make the correct, best desicions u can. Play good poker, whether u lose or win. Money will take care of itself.

[TStoneMBD]

[ QUOTE ]
I consider myself a teacher first, TStone, not a theorist. I teach novice and intermediate limit hold 'em cash game players to whoop up on small and medium stakes games. And I believe that the overwhelming majority of players whom I am trying to teach would be better off if they pretended variance didn't have anything to do with any decision they make at the table.

[/ QUOTE ]

is this in reference to me because i have no idea what youre saying here

[uDevil]

[ QUOTE ]
is this in reference to me because i have no idea what youre saying here

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing to do with you.

I was just pointing out that Ed Miller's view of variance is quite different from that of the poster I was responding to. It might have made my point more clearly to limit the quotation to this part:

[ QUOTE ]
....I believe that the overwhelming majority of players whom I am trying to teach would be better off if they pretended variance didn't have anything to do with any decision they make at the table.

[/ QUOTE ]

[sethypooh21]

I was just pointing out that Ed Miller's view of variance is quite different from that of the poster I was responding to. It might have made my point more clearly to limit the quotation to this part:

[ QUOTE ]
....I believe that the overwhelming majority of players whom I am trying to teach would be better off if they pretended variance didn't have anything to do with any decision they make at the table.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree wholeheartedly with Ed's statement. People *would* be better off if "they pretended variance didn't have anything to do with any decision". However, I might have a slightly different view of someone who is likely to get the *most* out of a true beginners books such as WLLH. It could largely be the crowd I hand with, but my guess is a lot of these new players who *wish* to learn are ex-athelete types drawn by the competitive aspects of poker. The way one learns and improves in the athletic context is very straight forward, through repetitive trial and error. You see what works and what doesn't. You do it right, the shot goes in, the drive is high and straight or whatever.

In poker, this doesn't work (well it does, but the 'repetitive trial and error' process is much, much longer then a new player is likely to realise), and those hands which are most likely to give incorrect immediate feedback are those high variance hands with either slightly positve or slightly negative EV.

Wishing that a new player wasn't subject to this stimulus, and saying it would be better if they weren't doesn't change the fact that *because* they are new to poker, they are not likely to immediately grasp the unimportance of short term results as a barometer.

[uDevil]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree wholeheartedly with Ed's statement. People *would* be better off if "they pretended variance didn't have anything to do with any decision". However, I might have a slightly different view of someone who is likely to get the *most* out of a true beginners books such as WLLH.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ed doesn't make an exception for beginners.

[ QUOTE ]
...those hands which are most likely to give incorrect immediate feedback are those high variance
hands with either slightly positve or slightly negative EV.

[/ QUOTE ]

The hands discussed in this thread don't fit this description.

I played around with my PokerTracker database:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Hand Std. Dev., BB/hand

AA 4.7
AKs 4.6
KQs 3.1
QJs 4.3
JTs 2.8
T9s 2.3
98s 1.8
</pre><hr />

The average SD/hand for all hands (not just those listed) is ~1.5 BB/hand. Medium suited connectors don't have higher variance than other hands you would play and variance actually decreases as the rank decreases.

It seems that to decrease variance, one should fold AA and play JTs. Since that's ridiculous, clearly EV, not variance, should determine what hands to play, just as Ed said in his earlier post in this thread.

[ECDub]

Binions,
Thanks for taking the time to post the differences between the two editions. You did a nice job.