variance.

This is one of the things I've struggled with most while learning poker. All to many people see long term graphs from winning players that look like a straight line and expect poker to pay like you're bagging groceries.

When I started playing I played a weak/tight low variance style and grinded in a straight line for a long time. It worked but it wasn't optimal. As I progressed and became more tight aggressive I became more profitable, but as a result had a huge increase in variance.

I've improved a shitload recently and deal with variance way better than I previously did, and I thought I'd share a few points.

-55% winning sessions. Half the time you sit down, expect to lose money. The longer your sessions, the less variance, and the more likely you're session will be a winning one since you'll be statistically closer to your expected return assuming you're a winning player.

-Standard deviations (sort of wordy, long and math nerdy)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on_diagram.svg

Pick any spot under the line on this graph, and you're given a percentage chance that's where your session will fall. Look at the standard deviation scale on the bottom. KRE8R and I both have standard deviations of 40 big bets (80bb) per 100 hands.

So in terms of NL100 for simplicities sake, 1 standard deviation along the bottom scale represents $80. 66% of the time you sit down to play 100 hands, your session will fall within -$80 or +$80. 95% of the time, between -$160 and +$160. The other approximate 5% of the time, anywhere between -$240 and +$240.

Obviously most people play way more than 100 hands in a session, generally 500 is a fair estimate, 4-tabling for a bit longer than an hour, so this reduces your variance and brings you closer to your expected winrate.

-Breakeven stretches. I don't have any stats or formulas at the moment, but I'm going to dig some up in the next few days for my own interest and I'll post when I do.

I have just come out of a 7k hand breakeven stretch and it didn't tilt me in the slightest, and have previously suffered close to 10k breakeven at stars after being a 20ptbb/100 winner at nl5 over a ridiculous amount of hands.

That's all for now, food for thought, I'll post some more later.