The Long-Run, Live vs Online, maximize EV vs. variance reduction

[davebwell]

I've read some reviews in the books and publications section that leave the impression that a lot of the LLNL Vegas grinders think that the advise from the 2+2 forums and publications is too aggressive. (I'm sure most of you have heard players talk about those crazy internet folk.)

This and a conversation with a coworker got me to thinking about why live players would possibly be more conservative and pass on positive but marginal EV situations. The best I can think of is the time it takes to hit the long-run online vs live. In live play, you play one table at a time and on average I would say about 35 hands per hour. In a 2000 hour work year, you see 70000 hands. I usually play 4 tables (and I am far from a pro)but I hear about players who play 12 tables or more. These players see about 60 hands per hour per table, so they would play 1440000 hands in a 2000 hour work year. This means that one year of full time online play would be the equivalent of about 20.5 years of full time live play.

It seems like a lot of the differences about what is reckless play vs just plain aggressive can be attributed to the speed of convergence towards a long-run in the distribution of cards.

Some thoughts from the far more experienced players would be interesting.

edit: my hands per year calculations were off by a factor of 10.