Can variance be this bad really?

[Stuey]

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Thanks for the butt kicking. I just haven't seen so many different ways to bust good to great hands in one session. I have had runs of -220BB before, but it took a long time to get there, never this many in one night.
There was a post about these bad runs are good things. Please explain?

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Without negative variance you could never have positive variance. Positive variance is the part of poker that tricks the fish into continuing to play. They play wrong and win just as often as we play correctly and lose. Without winning players having bad runs poker would die.

Not many people are playing 5-card stud if you didn't notice. In that game the variance is very low, the expert player will dominate the fish and the fish leave. Then you have a bunch of really good players playing a game in which none of them are making enough to justify their time.

So when you are in a bad downswing, check to be sure you are playing correctly. Then realize it is a good thing and it is just your turn to suffer it out.

Gigabet

Read the link that Gigabet was commenting on also.

You can't run from negative variance by moving to a different site, table, or state! I wish I could explain it properly but I'm just glad I know it. GTAOT by Mason Malmuth got it through my thick head I'm sure it would work for anyone. The cards have no memory or what they just did to you and if they did they would not care. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[DMBFan23]

From a recent thread from HUSH:

It can be much worse

[Kumubou]

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b. when everything is going well, tend not to be as introspective of their game, and attribute it all to skill, but once it goes bad, bam its all variance

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The counter to this line of thinking is somewhat dangerous. From what I have seen on these forums (both recently and in the archives), a lot of people who run bad end up prolonging their bad streaks not because they are playing bad poker (although that happens a lot), but because they are trying to find flaws in their game that are really not there! It takes a ton of effort to find one's mistakes in the noise, but as one is running bad one is naturally take that as an indication that they are making mistakes, which is wrong. This biases people to find and fix mistakes that never were there in the first place.

To know that you want the variance (both good and bad) is one thing, but to accept is while playing is much more difficult (and a sign of a higher plane of poker existence).

(More on this when I finally throw up my Ye Old Stats Post.. hoorj)

-K

[skoal2k4]

variance can be far worse considering there is no end limit (number of hands is infinite!)