"Playing multiple buy in levels also dramatically increases variance."--skilled sox in http://www.husng.com/content/interview-skilledsox Ok, why? I would think it would reduce it. Assuming you had a higher average roi in the lower buyin.
"Playing multiple buy in levels also dramatically increases variance."--skilled sox in http://www.husng.com/content/interview-skilledsox Ok, why? I would think it would reduce it. Assuming you had a higher average roi in the lower buyin.
Because at bigger buyin levels, the players are usually better so your edge goes down in them. Also when you lose, you lose more $$$.Say you were playing the $55's and you had an ROI of 10% and you only had an ROI of 5% in the $110's - that is the same expected return dollar wise. So by playing in the $110's you are basically risking twice as much to win the same amount.
Well ya, that's obvious. But, I thought the quote meant there was something else involve. And the way you talk about different roi's means it should decrease your variance to play 2 lower buyin levels for every higher buyin level. So still confused.
I don't really know how to explain this to you adequately, but if you want a pretty extreme example...Consider someone who plays only $50 games, then consider someone who plays mostly $1 games but takes a shot in a $2200 and has $50 average stakes because of it. Pretty much the entire basis for the total profit is going to be on the outcome of the higher stakes game. For someone playing both higher and lower than their average stakes it is going to be more volatile because the small sample of higher stakes games are going to be the biggest factor in your profit.
So it wouldn't make sense for someone to play both 20s and 50s since your total profit would come too much from the $50s. You would have to win 2.5 20s for every $50 you lost.
Of course it increases variance if you think of it as adding the higher one, but if you played $100s and added $50s to your repertoire, you'd be reducing variance. When moving up in limits, adding the higher limit, while also playing games at the lower limit is a way to mitigate the increase in variance of moving up, like a stepping-stone to a higher limit. I personaly think it is an intelligent way to move up in limits. Playing $20s and $50s would be a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It will frustrate you the first time you have a day where you go 13-7 on a session and end up not making any money, but that works both ways too. It would basically be like moving from a $20 player to a $35 player(of course that doesn't make sense since the first steeping stone would be $20s and $30s on most sites, but you get the point.) Game speed(turbo v reg v deepstack), how many tables you play at once, and time of day and week that you play all also affect roi---->variance.
NNNobodYYY (n0b0dy)
Ok ty. That is the way I had though of it. So now I am even more confused about that quote. The way I figured playing some lower limits is a way to stretch your bankroll..same as if you were also playing some other kind of poker. Almost like having a part time job.
Well, I'm used to playing multiple buy-in levels and also multiple game speeds - at the moment $35 ultra-turbos and $50 turbos - simply because it reduces the waiting time till someone sits me.Since I roughly play the same number of $35's and $50's, adding the $50's actually reduced my variance a bit due to the slower game speed.However, this doesn't apply anymore if you go higher and take - let's say $120 ultra-turbos and $200 turbos since the different in your opponent's skills is probably much higher between these limits than between $35 and $50.
Well obv adding a higher buyin level of slower games will decrease variance since the higher level affects variance more than anything else. However if you play e.g. a 50-50 split of $5 on PokerStars and $50 on some crazy euro site, your variance will be huge coz it'll depend only on the $50s (even tho you might have the same edge in both), and it'll take you twice as long to generate the same sample size.
The question here is what the reference point is, in other words increasing variance compared to what? Just adding a second table at the same time will increase variance for instance, from dividing your attention and thus bringing down your ROI at least a bit. If you add a second table at the next level up then you have this plus playing bigger on the new table which obviously increases it. If you add a table a level down you'll increase it a bit from the lower ROI but reduce it from the lower level and the net effect should be a reduction. So in the end if you're adding a higher table then you will be increasing it, perhaps not dramatically, and if you're adding a lower table you're probably decreasing it, and adding a table of the same stakes will increase it slightly depending on how well you handle it.