Variance is a Good Thing

So most people by now realize that poker players who play badly are a good thing in the long run. But people are still frustrated when they get sucked out on (myself included once in a while). They curse variance but accept it as a part of poker. But if you asked anyone if they would rather play the current version of poker or poker where there was no luck involved, most would pick the 2nd one. I'll take the current poker all day long.

If poker went so that good players consistently went up and bad players consistently went down, it would be much more obvious whether you were good or bad. If you played poker, barely won a pot, and your graph was a straight line down as time goes on, how likely are you to continue to play poker? So as time went on there would be new bad players but for the most part the good players would continue playing and the bad players would stop because they were broke or realized they were throwing money away (or a third alternative is they'd realize they're bad and get better). Any of these 3 provides an increase in the percentage of good players at a site. Not only that but now that there are only "good" players, the bottom 50% of the "good" players are now bad players, and consistently start to lose. Continue that a few cycles and none but the world class players would be left. They'd beat the new people who came and take some money from each other, but the average winning player now would end up not able to win any longer.

But the way it is now, bad players will remember a time when they won and assume that was the norm. Honestly, how often have you heard of someone who "won x dollars in y days and now I can't win anymore"? Do you really think these are good players? They experienced positive variance and because of that gave it back and more to the poker population. This is true in so many other parts of life. Think of golf. I gave it up as I committed myself to baseball, but when I played I would always do horrible, average 5-6 on each hole, but at the end I'd always remember the one hole that I parred or once in a while actually birdied. This would keep me coming back and I'd never quit when I did horribly because I knew that I COULD do better. Now equate that to poker, they know they CAN win, it's just that in the long run they won't. But they don't understand that so will continue to play, once in a while winning a little and re-enforcing the "fact" that they are a winning player who has bad luck in their head.

And that isn't the end of the amazing good that variance does. If you are a winning player, a bad streak can be extremely stressful on your mental outlook on the game. I know several good winning players who gave up on poker because they simply couldn't handle the swings. And you know what, I'm happy that they do. It's more money for me. Even for people who don't quit, there are countless winning players who tilt a lot of their winnings away during downswings. All this money goes into the general poker population which will tend towards you if you are a winning player. So if you can simply understand variance and the fact that it is your friend, you will make so much more money in the long run.

Variance helps you win money from bad players who wouldn't play otherwise and good players who tilt because of variance. If you are mentally tough and can handle the swings without tilting, variance is the reason you make so much money.

really good thread, but it always seems its ME that gets sucked on

yes i know, you remember the bad way more than the good.

ill keep todays poker over the luck removed any day!

wow, really insightfull thread. perfect timing for me too, as i am in the middle of a downswing.

Variance:
A measure of the up and down swings your bankroll goes through. Variance is not necessarily a measure of how well you play. However, the higher your variance, the wider swings you'll see in your bankroll.
Online poker with assorted reasons discussed over and over again, why you will have higher then normal variance when compared to live poker, doesn’t mean you can’t win online.
Let’s forget about big purse tourneys conveniently available online, and just consider playing cash games. Let’s also forget about the elite group that could afford to risk funds in big stakes cash games, where a simple heater could keep you in the game and in the green for a year, with sensible management. Let’s talk about just the average 20 million or so other online players.
Most of us work for a living, (like 98%) and play online when the grinds of a normal live allow us enjoy ourselves. To really work the long term expected outcome online and fight the variance that comes with it, would require an unreasonable amount of time dedicated to it, that most just don’t have.
Having a good time and showing a few hundred or thousand dollar profit for a year is one thing. But to talk like making a living grinding cash games online is easily achievable is pretty much fantasy for most.

Being able to multi-table and expedite long term outcomes by playing 7 to 10 tables at once trying to manage a thousand hands an hour, and showing a profit of $10,000.00 a year, of course is a good thing. But very few of us are capable of doing that in the first place, and certainly don’t have the time.
Most all the pros we know that are famous, became famous for winning the multi-million dollar purse tournaments, and usually more then once. Not grinding cash games.
My point here is to take poker for its face value.

P.S. Have much more to add to this but must rush off to work.

Amazing post Zach

+++++++rep

That's an extremely big part of this game that many people don't seem to realize. I actually reached this conclusion myself not too long ago. The fact that the weakest of players can suck out on a good one once in a while is what keeps the poker ecosystem running. That's why instead of lashing out at the fish who just hit his river gutshot against your top set you should just simply say "nh, well played". DO NOT tell him what he did wrong or how much of a crap player he is, it will only either make him leave your table to not be insulted or actually get better at the game. So, it will hurt your profit, hurt every player at your table's profit and you'll just be releasing information about how you play to good players; not a very intelligent thing to do...

So next time you get sucked out on show respect for the other players and be glad you put your money in when your opponent was drawing to 2 outs and miraculously hit one of them when the last card fell.

I won't be too lengthy since you said you had more to add, but if this is what you want, either

1. You shouldn't be too worried about making a profit, since you're not playing very much or are playing for fun

2. Poker is not the game for you. There is no guarantee of short term profit in poker, no matter how good you are.

and you said "to talk like making a living grinding cash games online is easily achievable is pretty much fantasy for most."

I said exactly the opposite, but I said that's why it's good. Poker is a 0-sum game, and with the rake it's even worse. So if it were easy, everyone would do it and the cycle I described in the original post would occur. The very reason poker can be profitable (or anything in life really) is because it's hard but if you work at it you can acheive those hard things. I want poker to be as hard as possible, I want there to be things to throw off other people who won't work hard at it. I profit when I have an edge, and each new challenge presents a potential edge that I can gain when I face it. So is any part of poker easy? Not at all. Is that a good thing? I think so.

vn Zach.

Maybe you should add "Zachvac - Helping the statistically challenged since 2007" to your sig line.

No, you're not. Downswings don't exist other than as a description of past events. You're not in the "middle" of anything.

lol, this ^^, that was kind of the point of the OP.

oh wait sorry, wrong thread. I was referring to the OP in this thread Anatomy of a Downswing

hahahaha so was I when I posted my comment..I've not read this article yet. lol

Isn't this just a matter of semantics? I don't disagree with your point, but when you have experienced a downswing for 'x' time, no matter what you do the downswing continues and your most recent efforts have produced no better results and there appears to be no end in sight - sure looks like 'the middle' to me ...

OK - maybe 'midst' (defined as: the condition of being surrounded or beset) might be a better choice of words.

PMA (positive mental attitude) doesn't change that either. When Lady Luck has designated you as the bug, the windshield will continue to win. Odds and percentages are decent indicators of choices to be made in your play, but of those 10 million hands that determine 'odds', how many times does Lady Luck determine 'who' is on the winning side of the hand?

The point is you cannot see in front of you. Actually you can, and if you are a winning player in front of you looks like a slowly increasing line. You can't talk about seeing the end of a tunnel, because you can't see forward. You only know what's happened so far. You could be in the middle, the end, or even just the beginning. The future is independent of the past, thus there is no way to predict the future based on the past. You cannot know you are in the middle of a downswing ever. You CAN look back and see "oh at this point I was in the middle of a downswing" but you can't know that when it is happening.

SORRY, maybe not technically a downswing, i've just been having a bad run of cards lately is all.

Do you think losing players praise variance when they win???

Quote:

Originally Posted by zachvac I won't be too lengthy since you said you had more to add, but if this is what you want, either 1. You shouldn't be too worried about making a profit, since you're not playing very much or are playing for fun 2. Poker is not the game for you. There is no guarantee of short term profit in poker, no matter how good you are. and you said "to talk like making a living grinding cash games online is easily achievable is pretty much fantasy for most." I said exactly the opposite, but I said that's why it's good. Poker is a 0-sum game, and with the rake it's even worse. So if it were easy, everyone would do it and the cycle I described in the original post would occur. The very reason poker can be profitable (or anything in life really) is because it's hard but if you work at it you can acheive those hard things. I want poker to be as hard as possible, I want there to be things to throw off other people who won't work hard at it. I profit when I have an edge, and each new challenge presents a potential edge that I can gain when I face it. So is any part of poker easy? Not at all. Is that a good thing? I think so.

I really think you completely misunderstood my entire post. After personally having great success playing online for years and then of course having one terrible year is not the reason for my usual negative stance against gun-hoe online poker threads. Before I go any further I would like to add that if I decided to grind further with online poker, it would take me years to give back my winnings, based on my BR management along with my strategy, and of course not turning into a full blown idiot. In fact I could even double or triple my present BR if I decided to go for it playing online. With that being said I also would like to add, that most intelligent threads like this one are very much fact, and could be great tips for the internet poker player.

In many of my past threads and posts I expressed great concern why I felt online is becoming a much harder place to be successful. Never said you couldn’t be successful online, especially since I did pretty damn good for myself online, and expect to stay there. I also was fortunate to be playing online early in the poker boom which of course probably added to my success.

Basically what I found especially after the U.I.G.E.A. was passed in “2006”, forcing the congestion of all U.S. players to just a couple of reliable sites is when it started to change.
The majority to include myself obviously choosing Poker-Stars which instantly became and still is the world’s biggest online poker site. Of course all the good players enjoying maybe a free ride at other lesser sites had to come over instantly making it much stiffer in competition. And although many people want to blow off BOT users, and professional collusion teams, they are a big threat and are now all forced into a select few sites. Bot technology has grown to new highs as of today completely undetectable to poker servers, and professional collusion teams are at extreme sophistication. Then we got all kinds of software support programs giving instant percentages and odds, along with storing records of previous opponents past play, making a good players game even easier and the donks we pray for game better then it should be; giving them the chance to get into the union without paying their union dues sort of speak. This along with all the confirmed cheating, (absolute scandal, selling off seats to pros late in tournaments, multi-accounting, and who knows for sure what’s next) This all in my opinion created a variance in online poker that although could still be overcome in time, to realistically achieve substantial financial results is beginning to look bleak. And like I said above, Variance: A measure of the up and down swings your bankroll goes through. Variance is not necessarily a measure of how well you play. However, the higher your variance, the wider swings you'll see in your bankroll.

We could talk all you want about coin flips getting even sooner or later, but can average bankroll players hold on and wait when there were 1 million heads and only 300k tails. And how about when the player that gets all his money in the pot with the best hand and some donk hits his 1 outter on the river trashing his br. Yet, when it’s his turn for the percentage to strike back in his favor he can’t get 2 cents into the pot. Does that hand count the same as a coin flip. If that happens often enough an average bankroll can’t stay for the ride.

I by no means will ever trash online poker, and could even jump all-in any day. But for now I’m giving live a more serious try.

So, my personal experience I’m trying share with other online players is solely based on my personal experiences as a veteran online player. What I say is nothing more than an opinion based on my facts of flawless records and how I presently view online poker. People that read forums are obviously here for a reason. Reading about my past experiences and opinions doesn’t make what I say poker law. Yet, for some it may be very helpful.

P.S. I could go on much more.

MMmmm... NOPE ... I'd guess that they praise their overwhelming skill ...

Variance is not the ups and down swings your bankroll goes through.

Quote:

In probability theory and statistics, the variance of a random variable (or somewhat more precisely, of a probability distribution) is a measure of its statistical dispersion, indicating how its possible values are spread around the expected value....

So for example although we know that statistically AA is the best hand, we may play lots of consecutive hands where it loses, but we know that if we play it a large enough number of times it should end up winning us far more money than it loses us.

thats second good thread i was by you today and i agree again

First off I'd like to say that the stat programs are probably good. You have donks who don't know what they're doing all of a sudden think they do because they have this program.

You are basically saying here that you think some people can only play for the short run in poker. I could check, but I'm guessing the odds of winning only 300k coinflips in a million is like .00001%. If you play a couple thousand hands, that's going to be close to the long run. If you only plan on playing like 2k hands in your poker life, you can't expect to win. Poker, live or online, relies on you playing in the long run. I don't know how to make it much more clear. The entire point of playing good poker implies you want to win in the long run. I don't see how live would be any different.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zachvac The entire point of playing good poker implies you want to win in the long run. I don't see how live would be any different.

I'll let you know for sure what I think about live after giving it the same shot I gave online. But so far from my experiences, I know my opponents bring to the table the real game they got. No software support giving them odds and percentages, no bot telling them to fold or raise, collusion not even close to what takes place online if any at all. TELLS, TELLS, TELLS, not just the betting pattern tell, real live human tells. Learning to trust in them has proven to pay off in a big way so far.

I see the long run being much shorter then online. Give me a year, has I have posted my recent results for this year here.

One other question Zachvac. Why do you constantly want to get into a dispute with me? How long have you been playing online and what are your results? Would be very interesting considering you seem to be an expert on many things.

Actually it's exactly the opposite. Since you can play so many more hands more quickly on line, you will get to "the long run" MUCH faster playing online than live.

In general, though, games online are a lot tougher, so the win-rate will be lower and the variance greater. In that sense, playing live does "shorten" the long run, as in it doesn't take as much time playing to overcome variance. I figure that's what he meant.

Ah.

I don't. I posted this topic originally, and you basically said I was wrong. I'm going to defend myself when this happens.

In terms of me personally playing, I've been playing online for a few years but only started winning last summer. I used to do the whole deposit $50 and sit with it all at 50nl thinking that online was filled with horrible donks and thinking I was good because I won at my home game. But one other kid (pretty much only good player at that game I played in) and I have since done a lot of reading, a lot of discussing, and then of course cardschat has helped me get better as well. I deposited $100 near the beginning of the year. Took a long time but I finally built it up to $500, then moved up to 25nl, slowly grinded up to about $850 before losing back down to $450. Took a break, re-evaluated my game, came back, and including cashing in the $2 million turbo takedown ($180 for a strictly FPP entry) I hit $1,000 about a week ago. I have since played at 50nl a little bit, nowhere near a large enough statistical sample, but I've won at 9+ (I think 9.11 but I'm on another computer, not mine that has PT on it) BB/100 over about 4k hands.

But this isn't even poker, I have a lot of experience in math and statistics. Some of it is courses in school but a lot of it is just outside reading for fun that I've done. It's amazing how much about math and statistics the average poker player doesn't understand, let alone the average person. An interesting book I read was "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper" by John Allen Paulos (doing this from memory so that could be spelled wrong) which describes a lot of general principles about math and statistics that even major newspapers don't seem to understand. So sure there are a ton of people here who've played poker longer than me, and certainly more who've won longer than me, but hell there are plenty of winning players who just don't understand the mathematical concepts of poker such as variance, regression to the mean, etc.

It's possible to be good at poker without understanding the math behind it, but I'm of the school that if you're doing anything it's important to understand why and the concepts behind everything. If you're just doing anything a certain way because someone told you to, I don't think you can truly adapt or be as good at improvising or improving on the method as if you understand what you're doing and why. I'm not talking about poker here, I'm talking about everything. For example when adding, I know many people who were just taught "this is how you add". I was taught using visual representations of units, tens, etc. and we learned about number bases at the same time we learned to count (so we understood the concept of carrying and why we do it at 10, the fact that it could be 5 or 8 or 2, our system just uses 10). Same as with poker, I take it upon myself to understand why we do everything.

And this is why I don't think bots will ever be better than humans, because they can't do this. They can't learn and adapt and apply different concepts because all it knows is what's programmed in, it doesn't have a deeper understanding of anything. So sure you can be a successful player if you don't understand the concept of my OP, but that doesn't mean it's not right and it doesn't mean it's worthless. This advice is not just for the guy who sits in front of his computer for 5+ hours a day multi-tabling. If you are all serious about poker (this is a poker forum, I assume most people are), you will play enough poker in your lifetime to constitute close enough to the long run. Even if you just play a few hours a week one-tabling for 5 years, that's 100k hands. I've heard 10k as a good number for the long run. Sure it's possible to have a bad downswing that long, but not likely. And if you're only playing that long you don't need the money and it's not that bad if you lose. And if you do need the money in the short run, don't play poker. Poker is intrinsically about the long run. I realize you have won in the long run, and if other good players want to they can as well. But if they want to make some quick money, poker's just not the answer. I don't know what else to say.

Mr. Zachvac, I'm sorry if you feel I said you were wrong. In fact I stated in my post, quote "that most intelligent threads like this one are very much fact, and could be great tips for the internet poker player". All I did was express an opinion much the same as you did.

You also seem to be doing well and on the right track. Good luck

... But sort that picture out. lol.

I have to disagree with you. For you knowing the previous betting patterns via software can be a big tell. You need to remember that most of the fish don't own software like pokerace hud/pokertacker cause they are not serious. Also I think it was Doyle Brunson who said that the most valuable tells are in the betting patterns.

The kind of software such as poker sidekick is becoming more popular because of a lot of marketing, but the software can't say when you are bluffing. If you assume that someone has that software it seems pretty easy to get them out of hands if they are following the software strictly. The most important feature of a good player is adaptability (I recently read the theory of poker) into different games/situations so you can exploit your opponents optimally.

Don't get me wrong, I love to play live and I will start playing some cash games once I move to Macau, but I still think that online is more profitable if you can adjust your play. This is because there are a lot of fish there and the software plus the fact that player play more loosely/stupid. For me, it is not the software, as I rarely use it, but rather my ability to read my opponents well and then use that information optimally.

And BTW, I agree that the notion of luck is very good for the best players, as humans tend to think that they are more skillful than they raelly are when they win and it also creates a smoke screen making the bad players think that they got a chance to win (The pros seem to be very happy in advertising the fact that on a given day any amateur can win the pro),

[quote=flint;741308]I have to disagree with you. For you knowing the previous betting patterns via software can be a big tell. You need to remember that most of the fish don't own software like pokerace hud/pokertacker cause they are not serious. Also I think it was Doyle Brunson who said that the most valuable tells are in the betting patterns.

This is one of my points when comparing live to online. The only game I have to worry about is the one my opponents brought to the table. Let's see how good they are without pokerace hud/pokertracker, sidekick, etc. etc. etc... My live play consists of 90% tournaments with 10% cash tables. During live play 90% of the time it’s against new opponents, without having to worry about what computer program they may be plugged into. I prefer my opponent’s knowledge is only what they’re capable of carrying between their ears. If they don’t know percentages and odds to infinity, well that’s their problem. I prefer my opponent not having a program that may sway and help them win even if it’s only one hand against me.

[quote=flint;741308] Also I think it was Doyle Brunson who said that the most valuable tells are in the betting patterns.

That type of information is older then he is. Learning betting patterns are both equally important and obtainable online as well as live. Again, this is a part of the game I prefer my opponents to have too count on their memory not software facts, when crossing paths more then once.

Tell’s online no doubt exist, but those same one’s are also there live. Most online tells today are common knowledge. Developing the ability of picking up human tells, is a great added bonus and could become a huge part of a game. None of the human possibility exists online. Blow it off all you want, I like the chance of having it at all.

I love online poker but I’m presently going all out with live play. I’ve had years of all out online play and I’m rather happy with the results. Yet, I want to see if live play could be even more rewarding. I’m going to give live play a good two years before drawing a conclusion. I of course will always play online, but just in satellites, and big purse tournaments for now.

A lot of people that have all that fancy tracker software incorrectly interpret what it says anyway, so it's not necessarily as big an advantage as people think. The lack of physical tells is a big drawback of online poker, as is the higher overall standard of play online.

When I say this I'm talking about tournament poker not ring games since I don't play ring games as much....

The more I play the more I realize poker is mostly luck and a small % skill. There's probably a higher % skill for ring games but I know for tournaments its almost all luck.

"people are still frustrated when they get sucked out on (myself included once in a while). They curse variance but accept it as a part of poker."

One bad beat like that is not variance, variance is running bad over a longer period of time.

No, variance is a term which is frequently used in the same sentence as standard deviation by boring statistical types, it is really just a fancy way of saying "luck".

And that's why when you look at tournament finishes over the long term (look at overall WPT for a good example) or at even single tables there are exactly as many pros as should proportionally be there. That's why if 1/9 of the field were playing for their first time there would be on average 1 person at the final table who were playing for the first time. Oh wait, you mean when you look at final tables there are proportionally more players recognized as good or pros? You mean if you look at WPT results you'll see a list that many think is accurate of the list of the best players in order? (Negreanu had a thing on this in his blog) Pretty big coincidence for something all luck.




Yep, technically the variance is the standard deviation squared (more accurately the standard deviation is the square root of the variance, but that's irrelevant), but in poker it basically just means anything
that VARIES from the expected results. So technically winning a coin flip is variance since you were only supposed to win half the pot but won the whole thing. But most of the time people are talking about a big enough sample to be somewhat out of the ordinary but still short term enough for it to be expected. Most single sessions won't give you your exact expected amount of winnings, even if they will all average out to your expected amount.

I still disagree, most of the people that use the software too strictly have no sense of situation which is probably the most important factor in no limit (I assume we were talking about it). In limit where the mathematics is more promient such software is much more useful.

Then again the software is a good thing since it makes players much easier to read. It is no wonder that it is so easy to extract chips from most of the players online (talking about low and micro stakes).

Personally, I am not afraid what players have what software as long as they don't see my hole cards they'll have big problems taking my chips



It sounds very familiar to what I will be doing in my 5 months stay in Macau as long as I get my online results in order. Good Luck, and we hope to hear how well you do. Got any big tournaments in mind?