Why do people dislike variance?

[r3vbr]

if the EV is the same, why is less varience better? to me it just adds a bit of excitement..
id hate to play poker if every day i played i won exactly the same ammout... isnt winning
2000
3000
-5000
9000
-2000
5000

better than:
2000
2000
2000
2000
2000
2000

both having 2000/day as average.. so it doesnt matter right.. it's like if i someday go to a casino and there's a roulette wheel with no 0 (neutral ev) i'd probably spend a lot of time there for free fun (in terms of ev)

[Freelancer]

If you are 100% sure that you are a winning player, and you don't care about the money I guess variance can add some excitement. But I tend to dislike losing money, even though I am a winning player (probably). If you lose one month straight it gets to you mentally.

[all_in_lam]

each time you sit down it's an indepedent event.

everytime people sit they obviously have the intention of winning, regardless if they won their last 10 sessions. so when they set out to win, and do not (because of variance) it becomes upsetting.

[PokerProfile]

1) Because it means sometimes coming away with less money than you sat down with.

2) Because its difficult to reconcile yourself with the conclusion that its variance that caused you to lose money, and not playing less-than-optimally.

[CaucasianAsian29]

I sound like you, only when I've been winning for a while

[THAY3R]

[ QUOTE ]
\it's like if i someday go to a casino and there's a roulette wheel with no 0 (neutral ev) i'd probably spend a lot of time there for free fun (in terms of ev)

[/ QUOTE ]

What's funny is that even if the game was neutral ev, most people would still lose.

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
What's funny is that even if the game was neutral ev, most people would still lose.

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh? If every bet were a 0 EV bet you couldn't possibly lose in the long run. Am I missing some joke?

Edit: I guess you could mean that everyone would keep betting until they ran out of money by hitting a long streak. But that wouldn't happen with probability 1.

[kazana]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What's funny is that even if the game was neutral ev, most people would still lose.

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh? If every bet were a 0 EV bet you couldn't possibly lose in the long run. Am I missing some joke?

Edit: I guess you could mean that everyone would keep betting until they ran out of money by hitting a long streak. But that wouldn't happen with probability 1.

[/ QUOTE ]
I believe he's rather talking about martingale junkies. Probability of going broke may not be 1 but if you play long enough you should get dangerously close to that.

[kimchi]

Part of the enjoyment of poker is the unkown.

How much will I win/lose today?

If this is totally predictable, then poker will lose most of its appeal.

Having said that. Variance still sucks ass.

[rocketlaunch]

[ QUOTE ]
isnt winning
2000
3000
-5000
9000
-2000
5000

better than:
2000
2000
2000
2000
2000
2000


[/ QUOTE ]

No.

But of course, if the second set of numbers really were possible, there wouldn't be any games anyways, so I'm satisfied with the high-variance accumulation method.