blonde poker forum

I noticed last night that Stars has the option on Zoom tables to 'run it twice' for no extra rake if both players in the hand have the option selected.

I also read some advice from Doug Polk who said that if you ever have the option to run it twice (for no additional rake) you should do so. The reason he gave is that you should look to limit your varaince as much as possible and RIT does that.

What are your thoughts on this? My first thought was that I can't see why this is - surely most of the time when you get it all in you do so believing you have the best hand, so why give your opponent two chances to suck out on you? I can see the positives for when you get it all in with a good draw, to give yourself two chances to hit it, but why do it every time?

Getting the same EV with less variance should always be better.

I don't think that always getting it in ahead is optimal.  If you are 40% in a hand and you are getting 2/1 on a call, you should call in cash.  You also should bluff enough, and you are going to be behind those times.

If you are worried about getting sucked out, then surely it is better for half a stack rather than a whole one.  Though if this is effecting your game, you need to strengthen your mental game.  Maybe read DaveShoelace's book?

The first point above is way the most important though.  Craving extra volatility is bad.  You need a smaller bankroll for less volatile games with everything else equal.  You are less likely to go bust/ should go bust slower, with everything else equal.  My box is ticked. 

Think this is where your problem is?

I believe the more times you run it the more likely you are to realise your expected value.

If you could run everything 100 times then everyone's sad face graphs showing all the EV they lost out on wouldnt happen as often?

I would only run it twice in a game i wasn't 100% comfortable playing in and taking a shot or if everyone in the game was comfortable.  I like the angle of putting people who are taking shots outside of their bankroll/not good enough to play the game skill wise under pressure by only running it once, potentially sending them on tilt, playing badly because they lost a key pot.  I think there is a lot of long term EV to be gained if you see the bigger picture.

Obviously running it twice/three times doesn't change the EV at all as Doobs correctly says only reduces variance.  I think sometimes adding variance to games can make you more profitable longer term.

I like running it twice, although unfortunately they rake chopped RIT pots at DTD so it's probably not the best thing to do there :p

I just figure if I'm behind I've got two chances to catch up and if I'm ahead I've got two chances to hold, and if people want to get it in lighter against me because I'm happy to run it twice then that has to be a good thing, right?

Running it twice is fantastic for poker, any pro player should want to run it twice in general and nothing to do with variance. It's fantastic for casinos too, they should be desperately encouraging  people to run nit twice and I'm pretty shocked DTD rake chopped RIT pots as it's very very good for the ecology of cash games. They should defo not do that.

The big misconception regarding run it twice is that it matter in the slightest...theoretically it makes absolutely zero difference at all, it's a totally meaningless thing. I have had hundreds (and i don't think I exaggerate) of conversations with people about it and they just refuse to accept that it is a totally neutral thing to do.

Think of it like this;

If I say "lets flip a coin for who pays for dinner" we're now a straight 50/50 for who is paying for dinner (not if you're vs me obviously, I never lose these :P )

and you say "let's do best of 3"

What are the odds now?

They also take full rake from hilo split pots which is one reason why I lost interest in playing there.

I think the aspect of Run It Twice you're kind of forgetting to account for (and this sounds really obvious but it's very common) is that the pot is split into two. So in your first example, as much as you are giving your opponent 2 chances to suck out of you...you're at the same time FORCING him to suck out on you twice if he wants the whole pot.

In the second example, it's the reverse, you're giving yourself 2 chances to hit it...but again if you want the whole pot you gotta hit it twice.

So actually the two examples seem massively different...but in reality they are identical. The maths is like this

Lets take a standard 70/30 Spot (you have AK vs 56 on A47 something like that)

You're 70%, you run it twice. 70% of the time you win the whole thing....30% of the time you lose the whole thing. Simples.

Run it twice. You're now only 49% to win the whole thing (70%*70% - yuo have to win both boards twice) so that sounds bad. HOWEVER, as a result you're now only 9% (30% * 30%) to lose the whole thing.

If the pot = £1000, run it once your equity is worth £700.

Run it twice 49% of the time you get it all (£490) 9% of the time you get none (£0) and 42% of the time you get half (£210 (£1000/2 * 42%) £490+ £210 +£0 = £700


Do it from the reverse, you have the 56 vs AK on A47...

Run it once, 30% of the time you win it all, 70% of the time you lose it all = £1000 pot = £300 equity.

Run it twice, you only win it all 9% of the time, but now you only lose it all 49% of the time.

9% win (£90) 49% lose (£0) and 42% chop (£210) = Equity when running it once £300

You can run it 1 time, 2 times, 5 times, 100 times. The win% and lose % changes but the bottom line EV remains identical.


Problem with all this though is we're humans, it doesn't matter how sensible and level headed you are, everytime you run it twice win the first and lose the second you're always going think "Dammit should have run it once" and you'll be told be everyone at the table too.
Everytime you run it twice, lose the first and win the second you'll think "Thank god i ran it twice" and no doubt someone else will say it to you too :)
Everytime you run it twice and lose both you'll feel hideously unlucky and every time you run it twice and win both you probably couldn't care less about why you ran it twice :)

Say i have quads and you need one card that can make a straight flush, if we go once it is possible i could lose. go twice i can win mostly or never lose, 3 times i can never lose

be fun talking you into it  :D

You telling me if you RIT and he hits it on #2 you wont be tilted?!?!

They refuse to accept it is totally neutral, because it isn't.

Your dinner example is 50/50 you pay for dinner whichever way you go.

Doing two £50 flips rather than one £100 one means you lose your £100 only one time in four rather than one in two.

Sure some would prefer the extra volatility, but that doesn't mean it is better.  

By Neutral I mean, there is zero advantage to be gained from any amount of times you run it.  Which I know you agree with.

Lets roll a dice. You can have £1000 and 16-1 on any number one roll....Or you can have 7-1 on 100x £100 rolls - which one you taking?

Your examples are completely different scenarios to the one in the OP.   

Same EV less volatility is superior to same EV more volatility. 
Different EV different volatility, it depends. 

In your latest example, you of course take the £10k getting 7/1 on a 5/1 chance.  Just way clear of getting 1k at 16/1.

Hope you aren't doing the maths side of your bookmaking business.

zing  rotflmfao

No idea where the needle you have has come from, going to assume you're just being grumpy :)


Wrong.


Wrong.


Wrong. (2x Wrong actually)


If you want an account ever just let me know  ;whistle;

 
;popcorn;

It is maths, not opinion. 

I can have one £1000 bet at 16/1 on a 5/1 chance.  Mean expected return is 17000/6 - 1000 = £1833.33

or I can have 100 £100 bets at 7/1 on a 5/1 chance.  Mean expected return is 100*800/6 - 10000 = £3333.33

The rest is covered here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory)

It isn't perfect in the financial markets, because financial markets aren't perfect, but gere we are assuming something with known returns and known probabilities, so it works.   

Here is a better example.

You have a million pounds right now and no way of ever making any more money. 

You can take one bet of a million pounds, or a million bets of £1 each on separate 50/50 chances.  Each separate bet is on a perfect 50/50 chance that is independent of all others.

You take the million pound bet on a 50/50 chance you are taking a way bigger risk than a million separate £1 bets on different 50/50 chances. 

The max loss is still a million, but one you have a 50% chance of losing your million and living in the gutter, on the other your chance of ending up in the gutter is so close to zero that excel thinks it is zero.   

This example is extreme, but the more volatility you take for the same return, just means you are taking a bigger risk for no benefit.

Of course if your plan is just to grim your gamblers if you lose, take the million pound bet. 

Happy for anyone to correct the maths above if I have made a mistake.

OK....

In my initial example I was suggesting a scenario where you could bet the same amount of money with drastically different EV and drastically different win %s.
You can roll 1x dice 1 time 16-1 for £1000 and make 116% EV  with a win % of just 16.6% or you can roll in 100 times for £10 a go and get 7-1 make 16% where you are a big favourite to come out ahead and an enormous price to lose all your money.

****I've just read it back and I said 100x £100 rolls which means that you'd be betting £10k not £1k which was not what I meant. I meant 100x£10 rolls so the stakes are the same but the win % is drastically different. So i'll apologise for the confusion there, and admit you were correct what you said******

My point is that you can't describe those are neutral, as it's clear there is a a big edge in picking one over the other. Just as you can't describe the other as not-neutral, when there is no edge to be had in picking one over the other.

In your examples, like the £1m coinflip or 1,000,000 £1 coin flips you're saying there is a clear advantage in one over the other, or running it twice....with no bankroll restrictions you're just wrong. There is no vacuum equity advantage in picking one over the other.  Portfolio Management is totally irrelevant to this, we're talking about isolated EV with perfect information where you know the upside, the downside and the win/lose%.  

If it's the guys last money on the table then OBVIOUSLY he should run twice because when he loses the pot he also loses the EV of all the future spots he might have if he was still in the game, spots he wont get when he's sat by the slots trying to nip the roulette guys for a taxi fare. Once you start bringing conditions in then obviously it changes, but that was never the discussion.

I'll put my money where my mouth is and bet on this.

We each pick 3 guys with over 2000 posts on blonde that we know will be honest. You only need 2 of them to agree you're right to win.

Bet as much a you want.

The opinion of high profile blondes wouldn't prove much though, it's just maths. You are right, following the qualification you posted.

Kuk, i'll be picking you  :)up

It is maths, not opinion, as stated above.  1,000 hands with £100 pots produce less variable returns than 500 hands with £200 pots.  The higher the variance, the more likely you go bust.

If you want to believe it makes no difference, it is fine by me.   If OP believes you over me, that is fine too. 

I know you know what I'm saying is right, we both know that what your saying is also right and that's it's also not really relevant to the discussion...

I got hugely tilted by that bitchy comment about my business, didn't care for the tone. Probably wasn't meant like that so I'll just let it go though.

OP, you should probably run it twice if you can, it's quite a friendly and social thing to do and it is good for the game. If you're tilted/stuck/don't like the guy you're in the pot with /really wanna gamble/don't care if you lose/have a good feeling then just go once, can't go wrong really. Sorry for interrupting your thread with my nonsense.

Good luck to all :-)

Thanks for the replies, I think I'll probably keep the box ticked when playing Zoom now.

It isn't that I'm 'worried' so much about my opponent sucking out on me, I just hadn't considered the reduction in variance correctly.

How does it work in live? Obviously in Zoom you don't get much choice - if your box is ticked and your opponent's is too then when it's all in you RIT. In videos I've seen of live games where it happens though I think the cards have been flipped before one of the players says "Run it twice?". Is it always the case that you choose to do it after seeing the cards or does it depend on the casino?

some, admittedly very few, casinos dont allow you to RIT, much more common is them not allowing you to run it 3-4-5-6 times (it happens!) because it's an absolute head-fuck for the dealers and mistakes are inevitable.

Most of the time, you get all-in, show your cards and the conversation will go something like "you wanna do it twice?" from one side, there's no reason why you necessarily why you need to show your cards before any decision is made, but in a live game, typically people would find it a bit anti-social to refuse to show your cards and then ask about running it twice, there's no logical reason for this it's just how it is. Like I said running it twice is kind of a friendly thing to do, typically.

If you want to run it twice i a live game...don't be scared to ask, quite often people just feel a bit awkward like they are asking for some sort of charity and don't bother asking. If you're  a regular in a live game I would personally advise running it twice wherever possible, as it limits the swings for everyone and improves the ecology of the game, as Doobs very expertly pointed out if you're there for the LOL-long-run it doesn't make any difference.

This was a good read and some interesting points made.

It looks like Dave / Doobs both agreed that EV is the same if you RIT.

I must have got lost in the maths somewhere, I think I get it if you're talking dice / coins etc but if you RIT in Hold'em, say if you hit your draw on the 1st board with a straight draw similar to an earlier example (AK vs 56 on a 47A flop), you now have 1 less out on the second board or you could hit 2 of your outs on the first board and have 2 less outs on the second board.  Likewise, if you brick the first board, you now have 8 outs + runner runner outs on the seconds board, with 2 more known cards. Does this not mean that the win % on 1st boards vs win % on 2nd board is not exactly the same when you RIT on every occasion? Or have I missed something? Some insight into this would be good.

Hi Mate,

Yes, it does mean that, with every card that's exposed the win %'s change, the example you gave is spot on. AK vs 56 on A47 you have 8 clean outs from 45 unknown cards  then if you brick you have 8 clean outs from 44 unknown cards. On the next run you have 8 from 43 then 8 from 42.  Every card that's exposed the % chance of winning changes, and this is the same even if you don't run it twice, or run it 5 or 8 times!

The big point is that at the point of making the decision, you don't know this information, you don;t know which cards are coming and in which order (if you did know for example that you'd be hitting your straight on the first card...you could just run it once :) ), so in the above example if on the first run it comes 3, then 8...like you said the first card of the next run you have only 6 outs from 43 (14%) instead of 7 from 43 (16.3%). Big difference...but you have no way to know this when you have to make the decision, so as the saying goes, you pay ya money...you takes ya chance :)

Hopefully that clears it up before Doobs comes in and starts babbling about some complicated economic theories  ;whistle;


We actually didn't quite agree on this... Basically what i said was that deciding whether to run it twice or not is a NEUTRAL EV decision, so makes no difference to the maths of the hand, in the OP Womble was saying he didn't want to run it twice because he didn't want to give his opponent the chance to outdraw him twice, I understand EXACTLY how that feels but the reality of the maths is that it doesn't make any difference to your EV. If you have 60% equity in a £1000 pot, then you have £600 worth of equity and you can run it 1,2,5, times and that won't change.

Doobs' point, was that actually running it twice is more +EV than not running it twice because you reduce your volatility and therefore the chances of going broke. Doobs' is absolutely correct that the most +EV thing in the world is not going broke. I'll give you a good example using a coinflip (god help me!!)

I give you two options.

1) You can flip a coin with me, you get 11/10 and the minimum bet is 1% of your NET Worth. Minimum amount of flips is 10 and we can flip as many times as you like.
2) You can have 30/1 on a coin flip, min bet is 100% of your NET Worth. Minimum mount of flips is 10.

Option one, you make 10% you can flip forever, betting 1% of your roll every time, chances of going broke is not 0% but it's so close to zero it's fair to say its' pretty much impossible to go broke and even starting at £10 a flip if you flip 24/7 for 2 years you'll be up millions.

Option two.  If you start at £10, and win all 10 in you'll have won £8,196,282,869,808,010 !!! Problem is that chances of winning them all is ~1/10,000. Soon as you go broke you don't just lose your £10...you loose the EV of all the other flips you could have had. Option 1 man won't make a trillion pounds, but he'll sit and print forever.

Even at 30x the ROI, option 2 is not the correct option, and as Doobs says that's mathematically proven. Now change the odds to make them the same and option 2 is even more reckless.

However, the reason why that ^^^ isn't relevant to this discussion is because in the OP we have no information about the size of the pot nor it's relation to wombles Net Worth. If the pot is £1000 and Womble is worth £2000 then running it twice is slam dunk the correct mathematical play, if hes worth £1,500,000 then it's exactly the same.

Also, we don't know that he has a positive expectation in the game (no offence Womble! Just an example) so for example if he has a negative expectation then the maths changes completely, if he has a negative expectation then there is no future EV to protect (just further losses to incur.)

Hope that helps :)

Excellent write ups Dave.

 ;tk;

 :D

Haha sorry womble!

I'm sure you are thoroughly +ev, but a man needs to make his example!

The idea of running it twice is obviously lower variance but I just dont like the idea of it. Potentially discourages recs by adding complications / them thinking regs are just angling or something. Just play poker. Especially live imo.

Does anyone know if they allow RIT in the Grosvenor Vic cash games? Going there tomorrow.

Fun one, Rendezvous in Brighton, you can run it twice in any pot over £1k but you can't say what you have or show your cards first....

How much do they rake a chop?

If anyone's interested they do allow RIT but only if the pot is over £500 at £1/£1 or over £1000 at £1/2 plus.

Sometimes you really wish you didn't have RIT selected...  ;technophobe;

(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/21742900_10155566173645871_6035294488244132829_n.jpg?oh=495938b910e867e71f249f834cd9fd47&oe=5A198A16)