Play By Commitee

[David_Nicoson 1]

Suppose that a 3-player team agrees to play a single hand by voting. They're all good players with a $x/hour winrate. What happens to their win rate and variance when they play as a team? The mechanics of this are simpler for a structured limit game, so let's start with that. On the plus side, the team would tilt less and nearly eliminate outright errors. But the play would probably tend toward ABC.

[Zach6668 513]

I think you'd time out a lot.

[David_Nicoson 1]

I think you'd time out a lot.

OK.There's some sort of software mediator that just takes the decision with the most votes before we time out. Hmm, 3 isn't really the right number of people here, is it? 1 vote -- fold, 1 vote -- raise, 1 vote -- call. In the event of a tie, the software picks a random action.

[Zach6668 513]

Sorry, I was just being a smart ass.Meh, for a limit structure, there'd be no way to eliminate the possibilities of ties, so the random thing works, I suppose.I'm not really sure what effect it would have on anything though. I guess, at least, you'd eliminate tilt/emotion decisions, but at the same time, you might take away that internal "feel" that some players have, although it's possible for it to still be there among the three/four players.I imagine though, in theory, we'd be raising our winrate, for sure. With an improved winrate, variance would decrease. I'm not sure there'd be any other affect on variance though. And I'm not sure how much we can actually improve our winrate.

[two-headedboy 0]

I think you'd time out a lot.

I lol'd.If the 3 players are all good, I'd think they'd make more money if they were all playing by themselves. Granted, play by committee would help in some tough decisions, if those players are already good I would think they'd win more playing by themselves. However, I do think play by comittee would be nice if the group was of so-so players; I would imagine it'd be a good learning experience.

[SpiderGuard 0]

I imagine though, in theory, we'd be raising our winrate, for sure. With an improved winrate, variance would decrease. I'm not sure there'd be any other affect on variance though. And I'm not sure how much we can actually improve our winrate.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but I think winrate has nothing to do with variance. My understanding is that our expected profit per session/100 hands/whatever is distributed roughly normally with a mean (m) and a standard deviation (x), where m = winrate, and x is roughly = to what poker players call "variance." If you change m, you're not necessarily changing x, you're just shifting the mean left or right. The perceived effect of variance would be decreased (i.e. we wouldn't lose money as frequently...we would just profit less), but the actual variance would be the same.That being said - variance might be decreased depending on how we tilt, and how much this committee decreases tilt (5 people would be more effective than 3 probably). I personally tilt by becoming a massive aggro-donk, and playing a spewtard LAG style (disclaimer: not all LAGs are spewtards, just tilted Spider). That decreases my winrate and increases my variance, and if I could eliminate those hands from my repertoire I'd be better off.Edit: Also variance would probably increase or decrease depending on what the composition of the committee was. Two LAGs and a TAG would increase the variance for the TAG, and decrease it for the LAGs, while the opposite would occur with two TAGs and a LAG. (I think this is right?)

[Zach6668 513]

Winrate affects variance, as far as I understand.A bigger edge results in smaller swings.A breakeven player will have significantly bigger swings.A losing player will have an infinite downswing.Edit - I can't prove it in mathematical terms.

[aucu 3]

Can't see it working, seting up a plays such as check raise, slow play, bluff, reads would all become disfunctional.

[SpiderGuard 0]

Winrate affects variance, as far as I understand.A bigger edge results in smaller swings.A breakeven player will have significantly bigger swings.A losing player will have an infinite downswing.Edit - I can't prove it in mathematical terms.

My understand of it is that variance is independent of winrate. I'm going to butcher the math here, but let's assume two NLHE players go AIPF with AA vs. KK. AA has 80% equity in the pot, KK has 20% equity (just go with my numbers - they're close enough). But one of them receives 100% of the pot because that's how poker works. The difference between your equity in the pot and how much of it you receive is the variance. Losing is different from a downswing the way I've heard it used. "Downswing" is being on the negative side of variance, losing players could be on the positive side of variance and be big enough losers that they're still losing.I'm not 100% sure this is a reputable site, but it's got Caro's name attached to it and it agrees with what I think so it must be right ;)An excerpt from: http://www.poker1.com/mcu/pokerdictionary/...ictionary_v.asp

A very tight player who rarely made risky plays might be a steady winner; likely his play would show low variance. An aggressive player who made frequent risky plays might win more overall, but his play would show high variance. The higher your variance, the larger the bankroll you need. Playing very few hands and only those with a high expectation of success is a winning strategy for many players, particularly in low-limit games. Such a low-variance strategy produces consistent results, with few deviations, but also at a relatively low hourly rate. Playing more hands, particularly hands that are purely speculative, frequently betting aggressively when having only a small edge, and other risky plays might produce a greater win rate for another player, but the high-variance player is also subject to be stuck considerably more at any juncture.

[aim786 0]

My understand of it is that variance is independent of winrate. I'm going to butcher the math here, but let's assume two NLHE players go AIPF with AA vs. KK. AA has 80% equity in the pot, KK has 20% equity (just go with my numbers - they're close enough). But one of them receives 100% of the pot because that's how poker works. The difference between your equity in the pot and how much of it you receive is the variance. Losing is different from a downswing the way I've heard it used. "Downswing" is being on the negative side of variance, losing players could be on the positive side of variance and be big enough losers that they're still losing.I'm not 100% sure this is a reputable site, but it's got Caro's name attached to it and it agrees with what I think so it must be right ;)An excerpt from: http://www.poker1.com/mcu/pokerdictionary/...ictionary_v.asp

Actually, variance and winrate are very much related. The mistake you made is in that bolded sentence. It should read "The difference between your expected return and how much of the pot you receive, squared, is the variance."Let's look at a few examples to make everything clear. In all 3 examples we're assuming each of us is putting up $100:1) A Game of ChessIntuitively, we know that the better player will win every single time. Therefore, his expectation in this game is $100 and his variance is 0.2) AA vs KK AIPFIn this situation, intuitively we know that our expectation will be fairly high and our variance will be lower than if we had a smaller edge.Expected Return0.8*(+100) + 0.2*(-100) = $60Variance0.8*(100 - 60)^2 + 0.2*(-100 - 60)^2 = 6400Note that in calculating the variance, we included the effect of our expected return.3) 22 vs AK AIPFIn this situation, intuitively our EV will be lower and our variance will be higher than the cases above.Expected Return0.55(+100) + 0.45*(-100) = $10Variance0.55*(100-10)^2 + 0.45*(-100 - 10)^2 = 9900Now, the reason a "risky" player would make more with a higher variance than a risk averse player with lower variance is as follows:Both situations 2 and 3 above are +EV plays. Therefore, say we decided to play 2 hands of poker, one as in case 2 and the other as in case 3. The risky player would play both hands and make money on avg in both cases, but his variance would be higher than the risk averse player who would only play case 2.

[SpiderGuard 0]

But would a player with a winrate of 3BB/100 necessarily have a lower variance than a player with 1BB/100? My understanding is that he wouldn't, but I could be completely off.Intuitively - a player who literally folds every hand at a ten handed table (because it makes math easy) would have a winrate of -15BB/100 hands. But his variance would be zero. On the other hand, the guy who pushes only with AA and gets 3 callers every time would have a much higher winrate and variance. And the guy who pushes with 66-JJ and gets 1 caller with two overcards every time would likely have a near zero winrate and a higher variance than all three.If I'm right (and I may not be) then higher winrate doesn't necessarily = lower variance. I'm thinking of profit as a normal distribution with a mean (winrate) and a standard deviation (roughly equal to variance...). The two don't have to be correlated.The way I understand it, a person can be a super tight, losing player with very little variance. On the other hand, a person can be a super loose, winning player with insanely high variance.Am I getting this, or what am I missing?

[CobaltBlue 662]

I don't see why tilt goes away. We could easily be tilted by our committee's decision.

[Actuary 3]

Your BB/100 Variance is influenced by two elements:1. The amount you bet (i.e. LAGs build bigger pots and donate more chips in hands they play)2. Your edge in terms of how many hands you win.Number two was demonstrated by AIM.A coin flip has a higher variance when the coin is fair.Or anther example, Number of Times You Roll a 6 on a six-sided die has a lower varianace than couting heads on coid flipping.Number 1 should be clear to everyone.Thus you could have tight breakeven players with little variance and "big" winners with lots of variance.However, the tendency would be towards higher variance for breakeven players and for players who get more aggressive in and play more pots And finally, David, how exactly are we measuring variance with 1 hand?Are we saying we would replay the hand several times and measure our decision each time?I think variance would be reduces then. Just like how the Variance of the Average number of Heads is less than the variance of the number of heads.... etc

[No_Neck 0]

I don't see why tilt goes away. We could easily be tilted by our committee's decision.

also if we are playing the same hands wouldn't it not really affect it anyway... I mean if we got AA vs KK for a 400bb pot we are all not making the best decisions.I think the win rate would go up, but not by that much because most of the decisions being made should be rather similar. It would only really affect a small portion of the decisions that we make, since most of them would be standard.

[AimHigher 0]

If you want to do this, why don't you just download software for streaming what's happening on your desktop in real time and then get a few good players on voice chat with you?I think the group dynamics that would develop from discussing every hand would prevent the guy who is actually playing from tilting (especially if each player only paid 1/3 of the entire bankroll) and you wouldn't need incredibly elaborate super-software to perform the task.Edit: Can't you share your desktop on MSN messenger?

[antistuff 0]

also if we are playing the same hands wouldn't it not really affect it anyway... I mean if we got AA vs KK for a 400bb pot we are all not making the best decisions.I think the win rate would go up, but not by that much because most of the decisions being made should be rather similar. It would only really affect a small portion of the decisions that we make, since most of them would be standard.

i think you'd be surprised at how much those really close insignificant decisions matter. they are what make the difference between a player who wins decently and a player who destroys a game.

[David_Nicoson 1]

And finally, David, how exactly are we measuring variance with 1 hand?

I mean that at any one time, they all are playing the same hand.

[David_Nicoson 1]

I don't see why tilt goes away. We could easily be tilted by our committee's decision.

One of the players can still go on tilt, but the other members presumably vote down his decisions.