Reducing Risk by Increasing Risk
The biggest winners in the long run at MTTs actually play an extremely high risk game in each tournament.
One of the great aspects of poker to the astute player is that it is full of extremely counter-intuitive areas, and ones which weak players make huge mistakes in, which quickly add up to profit to players ahead of them on the curve. One of the best examples of this is in how we behave in order to reduce or increase variance, and it is odd to know that things which actually drive up variance in the micro sense, can often hugely reduce variance in the macro.
Take multi-table tournaments for example. The biggest winners in the long run at MTTs actually play an extremely high risk game in each tournament. Their variance on a given day is extraordinary - ranging from huge wins over just a few hours, all the way to a week without a single cash. However, over the year their results are very stable, and they all bring back a solid and consistent return on investment over a large sample.
Compare this to the more cautious MTT player. Although they have less variance on a given day, as their conservative game often gets them into the small money prizes, over the year their variance is huge, as the small wins do little to combat the constant bad beats and extreme variance of MTTs. Despite playing the more conservative and risk free game, the cautious player is actually behaving much more riskily in the long run, and their variance over the year will be substantially higher than the player aggressively seeking the win in every tournament, despite their daily variance being much lower.
This has its echoes in other areas of poker. Refusing to run it more than once might drive up variance on a given all-in on one hand, but against players who tilt harder than you, will actually lower variance over time, as the bad beats throw them off their game much harder and faster than they do yours - something which quickly adds up to huge sums and very low yearly variance. Even just playing very aggressively massively increases risk on a given day, but over time reduces risk substantially by increasing your overall win-rate, and is clearly a better strategy than endless passivity.
As the saying from Amir Vahedi goes: 'In order to live, you must be willing to die', and nowhere is this more true than in poker. Behaviour which is highly risky on a given day is often actually the safest possible route over time; while behaviour that feels conservative and prudent is actually the fastest way to increase your overall variance and risk in the long run. It is critical that you understand the areas that you need to take risk in when playing poker - it is one game where prudence and conservatism can often be the very opposite of what it appears, and balancing risk well is crucial to long term success.