Is this what is meant by variance?

jugglegeek

Hand History #370704363 (20:51 11/05/2011)

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
aces4m	Small blind		£0.02	£0.02	£1.36
Stuwie	Big blind		£0.04	£0.06	£1.53
OhDancing1	Sit out
	Your hole cards	9 A
07121970	Call		£0.04	£0.10	£4.15
les1969	Call		£0.04	£0.14	£5.33
jugglegeek	Raise		£0.20	£0.34	£3.25
aces4m	Fold
Stuwie	Call		£0.16	£0.50	£1.37
07121970	Fold
les1969	Raise		£0.32	£0.82	£5.01
jugglegeek	Call		£0.16	£0.98	£3.09
Stuwie	Call		£0.16	£1.14	£1.21
Flop
		6 9 3
Stuwie	All-in		£1.21	£2.35	£0.00
les1969	Fold
jugglegeek	Call		£1.21	£3.56	£1.88
Stuwie	Show	3 3
jugglegeek	Show	9 A
Turn
		2
River
		6
Stuwie	Win	Full House, 3s and 6s	£3.29		£3.29

AMYBR

No thats a cooler i guess.  Am sorry but in all honestly its a fold pre for me.  You have no advantage with the raise or the limp behind.  Why bother bud?

Goethe

No, unless it's the third or forth time on the trot where you've made the same play and the same thing has happened, in which case I would say yes. This is simply a case of someone with a pretty naff hand getting lucky after an "all-in" calling decision. The "variance" is caused by not only the randomness of the cards turning up, but also your own raise and the opponent's playing style. Calling all in pre-flop with A,9o is the sort of thing I would think is called for when you're short stacked in a tournament or a SnG, not at a cash table.

Consider the numbers . . . you need one of 6 cards (out of 50 unseen) to make a pair (slightly better than evens, 6/50 divided by five chances), and he needed one of 2 cards to make his set (4-1, 1/(25/5)). So with your two different and higher cards there was a greater chance of you coming out of the round with a higher pair than your opponent coming out of it with a set. These are not the only considerations, as there's the possibility on both sides of endung up with the cards needed to make a straight etc

I've had a case recently during a session of 72 hands played, where I lost nearly 200 big blinds in losing 7 out of the last 10 hands I played. Three of these were losing to players hitting an 8-1 or greater draw, after I'd raised big with a fairly hefty mathematical advantage. In theory, I should only lose one hand of this sort out of every eight hands that I play, but here I am losing three on the trot. And of course it doesn't mean that I'm going to win the next 21 similar hands that come up.

Overall, a volatile game with no guarantee that the best player always wins . . . :-)

AMYBR

Your preaching to the choir bud.

But my game is dominately live, I think I saw this same set up in back to back hands last night.

How about this for fun?  44 vs A3 on a 245r flop, sat deep.  No fun at all, no improvement.

The sample size you use is pretty small bud (72).  When talking of odds/%'s were talking of likelyhood over sample, rather than balancing within a smaller sample size of hands.

It is **** unpleasent over all though.  I played a £60 FO, 14 handed last night, gathered lots of chips early.  Lost half of my stack in a AK vs 9's flip.  Then blinds are pretty huge, I'm on BB.  Douche limps UTG (limps most hands) I find AcKc in the BB no one else has come in.  My stack size is a mandatory jam 11BB's he calls with your dreaded 3's, he fades all trouble, turn brings me 4 to nut flush, but the 3's stay their course.  Ugly 3's

Goethe

In Response to Re: Is this what is meant by variance?:

The sample size you use is pretty small bud (72).  When talking of odds/%'s were talking of likelyhood over sample . . . .

Of course it is . . . . you can't draw any mathematical conclusions from a sample of this size - I just use it as a personal example of how results can be skewed, both within your historical playing results and within individual sessions or tournaments etc. In my own experience, just half a percent of the hands I've played to date at the cash tables account for more than 100% of the losses I've incurred. Pareto's law doesn't even come close.