Variance in different forms of poker

[XChamp]

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I might be mistaken, but doesn't your win rate have a big influence on your variance? More so that the particular game you play? A big absolute win rate gives less variance if my intuition is correct.

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Your intuition is wrong. A big winrate will cushion you psychologically when it comes to variance. It's a lot easier to deal with a $200/hr standard deviation when you are winning $200/hr than if you are winning $20/hr. The reason is that with the bigger winrate you will lose money only 1 out of every 6 hours on average, while if your winrate is $20/hr you will average losing money almost 1 out of every 2 hours ( a little less).

The swings, however, are the same. Both players will average being $100 under their winrate the same number of times over a given sample of similar sessions, for example.

edit- added 2nd para.

My reason for thinking this is not psychological. Lets go to the extreme, if you suck and lose every hand you play in poker you will have a low variance (and a bad winrate). If you are winning all hands played you will also have a low variance. If you win half your hands and lose the other half, your variance will be high.
So being far away from the rest of the table in terms of skill will decrease your variance.
Is that reasoning correct? (I am not sure)

[AlanBostick]

Ummmm, no.

Variance shows up not just in differences in kind of outcome (win vs. loss of individual hand) but in quantity: size of pot won vs. amount of money lost.