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#1
02-03-2007, 04:19 PM
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Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
We all worry about our win rate, it is of course why most of us play. However some people worry after playing one two or even 5 thousand hands. Most people who understand variance suggest having at least 100,000 hands before trying to analyse your BB/100, I am going to present some visual evidence for this.
We will look at two types of players, a successful player and a losing player. The winner has a true win rate of 5BB/hr and the losing player -2BB/hr, or roughly 8.5BB/100 and -5BB/100. I have assumed a standard deviation of roughly 50BB every 100 hands. In other words, for every 100 hand you can be up or down a full buy in. The good player should be "killing" the game and in the first graph after 100 hours (6,500 hands) he clearly is. http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/5BBGood.JPG Our hero is running very well crushing the game at 11 BB/hr or possibly 17BB/100 In the second graph however, he is not doing so well: http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/5BBWTF.JPG Wow... some wild swings ending up around -0.8BB/hr or -1.5BB/100 But check out the third graph http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/5BBBad.JPG Ouch! -7.5BB/hr or something like -12BB/100. How many people would call this player a losing player if he posted this graph after 6500 hands? In truth he is crushing the game in the long run. Now let's look at the 1600 hours or roughly 100,000 hands http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/5BB1600.JPG much more "normal looking" at around 4.5BB/hr, just a little off his "real" rate Now for the losing player. You know what's coming so I’ll just post the links. http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/Neg2BBGood.JPG http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/Neg2BBBad.JPG http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/Neg2BBWTF.JPG And the "long run": http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/Neg2BB1600.JPG Again we see the same kind of graphs. The losing player can actually be running +5BB/hr when in reality he is a losing player. So we see the value of not jumping to conclusions until we have a large number of hands in. But is even 100,000 enough? One final graph will prove my point: http://www.celticchef.com/poker/files/OMGWTFBBQ.JPG Here we see that our -2BB/hr loosing player can still break even over a large number of hands. This is why we should take 100,000 hands as a minimum before we seriously worry about our BB/100. Where does that leave the recreational player who likes to play 10 hours a week? About three years worth of playing to reach 100K hands. Of course, if you are crushing the game it is much more likely you won't face this long term downswing, but it does happen. Welcome to poker country... variance lives here and you are on her turf. She likes to play rough and when she does it is a bumpy ride. Don't let her throw you off your game and just take each hand as it comes. Just play each hand the best way you know how... and buckle up. 
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#2
02-03-2007, 04:40 PM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
I truly believe that you must embrace variance if you want to play and win at poker. Most people don't have a clue how much influence it has on results. Its nuts!
For example, checkout this post. OP has 7800 hands. Frankly it looks to me like he's crushing the games, but who knows? Nice work raistlinx. Good post.
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#5
06-27-2007, 10:04 AM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
Nice post, some analyses like these have been done before but I think these are clear and concise.
I would recommend that this thread be stickied for whine reference
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#6
06-27-2007, 10:08 AM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
Thanks for this. Sometimes I think I'm the worst poker player ever after sitting down for 4 hours and losing 1 BI. It's nice to have some empirical reminders of what we already know: That's poker.
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#7
06-27-2007, 10:17 AM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for this. Sometimes I think I'm the worst poker player ever after sitting down for 4 hours and losing 1 BI. It's nice to have some empirical reminders of what we already know: That's poker. [/ QUOTE ] Lol.. in my case its usually 4 BI [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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#8
06-27-2007, 10:24 AM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
very helpful, thanks.
would it be possible for you to add a link to the spreadsheet (it is available somewhere on the forums, but i can't remember where)?
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#9
06-27-2007, 10:30 AM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for this. Sometimes I think I'm the worst poker player ever after sitting down for 4 hours and losing 1 BI. It's nice to have some empirical reminders of what we already know: That's poker. [/ QUOTE ] Geez, I lost 6 BI in 30 minutes last night and you're worried about 1 BI in 4 hours.
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#10
06-27-2007, 10:36 AM
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Re: Variance in poker: Living with the Beast
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Thanks for this. Sometimes I think I'm the worst poker player ever after sitting down for 4 hours and losing 1 BI. It's nice to have some empirical reminders of what we already know: That's poker. [/ QUOTE ] Geez, I lost 6 BI in 30 minutes last night and you're worried about 1 BI in 4 hours. [/ QUOTE ] Hehe, I've definitely lost more than 1 BI in 4 hours; I just meant I get easily discouraged. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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