Average? Variance? What are these terms? What is the difference between them? If you want to be a good poker player, you must be able to understand answer such questions.
In technical statistics terms, average is a measure of central tendency and variance is a measure of probability. Average tells you what tends to happen while variance tells you how likely something is to happen. When determining whether to get involved in a pot, these are both very good things to keep in mind.
When poker players consider their results in terms of average and variance, it may be something like this: A player decides that their win rate is $5 an hour. That’s how much they win on average.
Let’s say Player A and Player B both have an average $5 an hour win rate.
Over his last 10 one hour sessions, Player A’s results have looked like this: Session One: +$10 Session Two: -$15 Session Three: +$25 Session Four: +5 Session Five: -5 Session Six: -5 Session Seven +10 Session Eight +10 Session Nine: +$15 Session Ten: +0.
For Player B: One: +200 Two: -$50 Three:-$100 Four: +$50 Five: -$100 Six:-$100 Seven:+$100 Eight: 0 Nine: -$150 Ten: +100.
Both of these players have a win rate that averages out to $5, but for Player B, the variance is higher. He is winning and losing hundreds of dollars each session, meaning that even though on average, you can expect either player to be up around $25 after a five-hour session, Player A will almost always be up or down around $15, while at any given time Player B could be down hundreds.
What is learned here is that even if you are a winning player, if you are a high variance player you’ll need much more money to be successful than if you are a lower variance player. If you do not have the bankroll to sustain it, a high variance style will be hard to succeed with.
You should also compare the different games. Short-handed no-limit hold’em usually has very high variance, especially if you’re the type of player who likes to push your chips around and put pressure on your opponents at every pot.
