Standard Drviaton

I am a novice player and have no Idea what "Standard Deviation" is. If someone can explain this I would be grateful. Also how does a player use this information to improve his play?

SD is a measurment that offers insight into the contents of a (random) population.


Get a statistics text. Without solid math you're more or less doomed to ignorance.

There seems to be a fair amount of discussion (and also confusion) about standard deviation on this forum and also the General Theory Forum. This could be due to the emphesis placed on standard deviation in several highly regarded poker books. In an effort to clarify what standard deviation means, I offer a simple numerical example, set in terms to which poker player could relate. Suppose you play poker on seven different occasions. You manage to win every night with the following results : 200, 100, 100, 100, 300, 300, 300. Well based on these results your average win is 200 and your standard deviation is 100.


Standard deviation is a measure of how results are distributed about the average. The reason that the 200 is included in my example is to account for the definition that std dev is based on the number of samples minus 1.


I hope this helps.

Using the above data, 68.27% of the time you'll be w/in $100 (one standard deviation) of your $200 win. 95.45% of the time you'll be w/in $200 (2 SDs) of your $200 win and 99.73% of the time you'll be w/in $300 (3SDs) of your $200 win. Hope this helps.


Once a Jek, always a Jek.

How about a formula for those without ready access to s statistics text and a desire to be less doomed rather than more doomed .... anyone have a formula available ?


Thanks.

" anyone have a formula available ? "


I'll share but...You must tell me what you

want to know.

Steps to Calc STD.


1. Get the Average of your data set.

2. Subtract Average from each point in data set.

3. Square all those values.

4. Get the Average of the sum of the squared values.

5. Std = the square root of the Avg of the sum of the squared values.


* Remember that all of you values have to be "absolute value" (no negative numbers)


I assume you are using this for calc bankroll ... as this will not make you a better player.


If you want to get better .. you should spot players like. Playboy, Flattop, Erik123..