[kem]

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I am not referring to variance per hand.

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what are you talking about?

you can easily make, say, +20 BBs in one hand. that gives you 20 BB/hand. however, if you play 100 hands, i dont think youre going to see 20 BB/hand.

that one hand can also easily be -100 BB, 0 BB, -1 BB, +7BB, etc.

larger sample size = less variance

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I think people are confusing the variance of their bankroll, and the variance per hand (i.e. BB/100). Of course if you're talking in terms of bankroll, the variance is going to increase as a function of how many hands you play. If you've only played 1 hand, you can't be down more than 12BB's, and can't be up more than 108BB's. After a million hands, your bankroll is going to be up (or down) a whole lot more than this range..

In terms of BB/100, it should work the other way. The variance of your BB/100 will go down as you play more hands. After 1 hand, your BB/100 could really be anything (from -12*100 to +108*100), but after 1mm hands, it's going to have a pretty narrow range. I really dont feel like crunching numbers, but I'm guessing it's going to be within a 1BB/100 spread.