[ohnonotthat]

His wording confused me a bit but it seemed as though he was asking about the confidence level for his [not quoted] win rate.

You are of course correct when you state that the hourly (or per 100/hand) SD will never change - providing, of course, that his skill, both absolute and relative to his opponents, never changes.

Certainly his hourly SD would drop if his skills improved to the point where he knew with 100% certainty the cards his opponents held; it's also true that his SD would plummet if he AND his opponents both posessed this skill.

- It's more or less accepted as fact that the SD for 20-40 holdem typically exists between 300 and 900 per hour depending on a player's style of play - if I played with 9 opponents all of whom played as well but no better nor worse than I play and we changed the rules so as to eliminate the final round of betting (the equivalent of having total knowledge of each other's hole cards) certainly all our SDs would drop - hard to say how much but safe to say not an insignificant amount.

Standard deviation in poker measures volatility and nothing else. Ones SD does not drop as his skills improve unless the improvement is such that it allows for (or in some cases causes) less volatility. Back in school I used to eke out a few extra dollars at 1-2 thru 3-6 games playing in a manner that would in today's world be called "weak-tight"; I had a limited bankroll and modest needs - I was fiercely protective of the former while wanting very much to meet the latter, ergo weak-tight was just the ticket. (The truth is I didn't know much what I now know but I may well have stayed the course even if I had - utility theory).

When gambler's ruin ceased to be an issue I played faster; when I learned more I played faster still. As one would expect my faster play and increased knowledge/skills led to a higher win rate but it also led to a huge increase in SD - though to be candid I seldom bothered to calculate it back then and I'm not a big fan of crunching numbers now for any other than curiosity. The important point however is that the faster play would have caused a big jump in SD even if it had been BAD play.

Think about the craps shooter who plays only pass/don't pass as opposed to the player is constantly firing chips all over the layout. While both will lose in the long run the former will undoubtedly lose less. Nonetheless it is the latter who posesses the only realistic chance of "breaking the joint" in an hour.

I now see that as per usual I have held to the motto, "never use 50 words to make a point if there's a way to use 100" so I'll sum it up in this way:

Playing 10 hours a day for a year will likely lead to a lower hourly SD but it's quite possible the change will be minimal; you'll improve you're reading skills (SD plummets) but you'll also learn when to make razor thin value bets (SD soars).

Similarly, you're win rate is also apt to see only minor improvements over the course of the year assuming you were competent to begin with.

You're confidence level, however, will soar over the course of these 12 months.

You may be an X dollar/hour winner at the start with an SD of 20X only to find these figures mostly unchanged when the year is over but whereas they were virtually theoretical figures when you began they are now facts - hardly the most reliable facts you'll ever posess but facts nonetheless.