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Hi guys, what is "variance"?
sweeney86
Member Posts: 11
I've read about it but I'd probably understand it better from a real person..
Comments
Its called a see-saw your happily going up and down then the good luck at the other end jumps off and you get "VARIANCE"
Your of on your Holiday and paid extra for 1st class Air flights ..... only to be told by people in the next seat they got up-graded from economy class. "Variance"
Your Boss treats everyone to the day off ........ but you have to work.!
Where's TK when you need him.?
Your questions seems to have been lost in a sea of unrelated stuff, so I'll try & explain variance in simple terms. Hopefully, I qualify as a "real person".
Technically, variance is when we run above or below expectation.
We'll use a nice easy example, & rounded numbers to make it easier.
Let's say we have A-A & our opponent has 7-7.
Mathematically, we are around 80% to win this hand.
Assuming we get it all-in pre-flop, & we play this exact same hand 1,000 times, we SHOULD, in theory, win it 800 times. The more times we run this same hand - say 10,000, or 100,000, the more likely we will win 80% of the time.
Now what happens of we take a sample size of one.
If we WIN the hand, for which we were an 80% shot, we are running ABOVE EXPECTATION. That's positive variance. We got lucky. We are running good.
If we LOSE the hand, for which we were an 80% shot, we are running BELOW expectation. That's negative variance. We are running bad.
For the maths to work out, we need a large sample size. So over 100,000 hands, we'll likely run EXACTLY to expectation. Over 10 hands, we will ALMOST NEVER run EXACTLY to expectation.
In a nutshell, that is variance. In effect, it's luck. Nothing wrong with getting A-A in v 7-7. If we lose it's bad luck. If 7-7 wins, it's good luck for him.
Over the long term, it all cancels itself out, all other things being equal.
When people hoot & holler that their Aces got beat by sevens last night, ra ra ra, they forget the times their sevens beat Aces. That's selective memory at work. Or, put another way, a bad loser, or someone who has no grasp of how maths work. 80% is not 100%.
In practice, in real life, I saw some extreme variance last night.
These 2 hands took place one minute apart in separate £11 PLO8 DYM's.
In the first hand, I had my man completely locked up - he had ONE out on the river & pinged it. I had to look twice, to see why the chips had gone across to him. I felt a little aggrieved - "how did he get there? sorta thing. No matter, move on.
A minute later, I got in in real bad, my K-K-x-x v Eon's A-A-2-3. It's hard to be in worse shape than that. On the flop, I got no help, but I hit runner runner backdoor flush & scooped.
There's both sides variance. I ran badly below expectation in the first example, hugely above expectation in the 2nd.
Run those 2 hands 10,000 times & they'll likely come out EXACTLY to expectation.
Hope that helps.
Word of warning. Many losing players blame "variance". They might be right, but it's often the case that they are not playing the hand correctly.
If we go back to our A-A v 7-7 scenario, the ods of 80% are PRE FLOP.
If we try to get cute, & limp into the pot to try & trap 7-7 man, then the odds change dramatically, as we give 7-7 man a chance to hit his 7. We also risk other players being in the hand, so our odds reduce again.