Trying to move up to 1/2

[SweetPea]

A lot of people have no concept of the true mathmatical variance that can hit you in this game. With a sample of only 10,000 hands, your results are very sketchy (though I realize that seems like a lot of play to most of us).

3.71BB/100 for 10k hands doesn't mean you are a longterm winning player. -1.27BB for 10k doesn't mean you are a loser. Your sample size is so small for both examples that the straight math of calculating your "true" winrate at various confidence intervals is suspect, but here goes. I'm also using 15BB/100 as your standard deviation which is probably low for $.50/$1. Using a higher standard deviation would produce even wider ranges than what you see below.

8,500 hands, -1.27BB/100, and I'll just use a 15BB/100 standard deviation:
50% confidence interval - True winrate falls between -2.37BB/100 to .17BB/100
60%: -2.64BB/100 to .1BB/100
70%: -2.96BB/100 to .42BB/100
80%: -3.36 to .82
90%: -3.95 to 1.41
95%: -4.46 to 1.92

10,700 hands with 3.71BB/100 and 15 standard deviation
50%: 2.73BB/100 to 4.69BB/100
60%: 2.49 to 4.93
70%: 2.21 to 5.21
80%: 1.85 to 5.57
90%: 1.32 to 6.1
95%: .87 to 6.55

So, "Yes"...it could very easily be variance, but in either direction. If you are confident in your play, 8,500 hands at -1BB should be no cause for alarm. You'll come to realize that you will have runs of 50k hands and more where you simply can't win, followed by 50k hands where you can't lose.

The disturbing reality is that most poker players have no real idea of whether they are a longterm winner or loser, simply because they haven't played enough hands in their entire lives.

But I'll stop rambling. Variance of this game is a pretty interesting subject. One you get your head wrapped around it, take a guesstimate of the # of hands it would take to get from the WSOP main event first day to the final table. While the cream will rise to the top over the longhaul, it may blow your mind to see how much the WSOP has in common with bingo.