Can someone help explain variance to a friend of mine?
 

I was just talking to him on AIM and he feels that a 3k hand losing stretch of losing 6 buyins is absolutely ridiculous, near impossible. I told him that it can happen to anybody and is not even that bad relative to variance some people go through over 10s of thousands of hands. He claims that this stuff should not be happening and that he does not believe it happens to every player at some point. I was trying to explain to him that 25bb/100 is not sustainable due to the fact that bad beats happen and that bad beats are normal.. and that without them everybody would be killing the games. He seems to feel that the beats he takes are just unreal and other people don't put up with it.

He told me about one hand where he flopped a set and lost to runners against someone who had TPSK and caught a boat. He says he told a buddy of his who plays poker about the hand and that the guy told him "wow i dunno, never seen something like that happen". Also may be interesting to mention that after 15k hands with the bad 3k hand stretch included, his bb/100 is at 8.

Re: Can someone help explain variance to a friend of mine?
 

Point him here.

Re: Can someone help explain variance to a friend of mine?
 

Right, I have... but I just wanted some good players who are playing at high stakes to post about it since he felt that theres no way some of them go through this kind of variance.

Re: Can someone help explain variance to a friend of mine?
 

I lost a buy-in once. It sucked. I don't expect it to happen again though.

Re: Can someone help explain variance to a friend of mine?
 

I can't believe you have never lost more than 10k/session playing 10-20.... You are PHALLUSY ARENT YOU???

Re: Can someone help explain variance to a friend of mine?
 

python,

up until last week (when i decided i'd had enough with school for now) i was only a part-time player. over christmas break, however, i played close to 50k hands. the first three weeks i ran extremely well and won over 55 buyins. after this crazy run i thought i was some sort of poker god. over the next 10 days or so i lost 20 buyins.

before that run i'd always read about variance and how 99% of the players out there don't fully understand how drastic swings can and will be. 50k hands really isn't even all that much so i'm not even sure how much i actually understand variance. but i do know that variance is a bitch.