So I just started playing live OE (omaha8 + stud8) and from what I've read and the little bit I've played it appears that both games have less variance than live NLHE. But I'm wondering how much less and I imagine I don't need as large of a sample size to determine how I'm doing. Does anybody have numbers that can compare the variance? Or can anybody tell me how many hours of Stud8 would give me the same level of certainty as say 500 hours of NLHE? Thanks

there's a lot more variance in OE as opposed to NL, similar to most other limit formats. In 500 hours of OE I would guess if you earned 0.5bb/hr over that time your true win rate could be somewhere between -0.5bb to 1bb/hr.

around 13-15 BB/100 on average for stdev.

the majority of play had between 4-8 players.

i dont have my old laptop with the databases, but here's some stats if ur curious.

btw 1 bb is 1/2 BB, so divide stdev and wr by 2.

Thank you Tiger those stats are very helpful. Can I ask what your stddev for NLHE is online? Only reason I ask is I live in a state with no online poker so I know my live stddev for NLHE but people play much looser live than online so that tends to inflate that stat if compared with an online stddev.

Really? I've read limit holdem has bigger swings than NLHE but I was under the impression that both LO8 and stud8 were lower variance because of the split pot nature of the game.

no idea. I've probably not played even 1000 hands at NLHE online.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...twoplustwo.com seems to show a lot of useful threads relating to your question.

From what I remember, the ev/stdev ratio is better in NLHE than in stud8. Also from what I gather (i'm not 100% sure on this), the fish in a typical live 2-5 NLHE game loses a lot quicker than a fish in a limit game.

Here's some more stats from merge in prolly 2012.
note: stdev appears like it's measured in $$/hand.

I think my play in
stud8 varied between HUHU to 8 handed (prolly mostly 4 to 8 handed).
FLHE varied between HUHU to 6 max (prolly mostly 3 to 6 handed).

it seems like at
5-10 FLHE, stdev was $21.84/hand (21.84 BB/100),
5-10 stud8, stdev was $14.04/hand (14.04 BB/100),
10-20 FLHE, stdev was $43.66/hand (21.83 BB/100),
10-20 stud8, stdev was $27.86/hand (13.93 BB/100)

I think at the time
my WR in stud8 was roughly +1.xx BB/100, and
my WR in FLHE was roughly -0.xx BB/100.

overall stats on merge:



here's what competition at 10-20 stud8 looked like:

note: almost everyone loses at an insane rate


this is what it looks like winning at 1.xx BB/100 at mostly 5/10 to 30/60:



this is what it looks like losing at 0.5 BB/100 at mostly 2/4 to 5/10 at FLHE:

note: 500 BB downer for a -0.5 BB loser

Thank you for posting all this data. I'll have to update this thread once I have a meaningful OE sample size. So far the OE feels less swingy than NLHE but I've only played about 60 hours so not a big sample size.

i actually disagree.

games in which there is many split pots make the variance much lower. its more steady because you're usually chopping tons of pots and making or losing small amounts rather than winning or losing chunks of stacks that you do in NL

plus if you're playing correctly you dont get scooped very often (much more the case in omaha 8 though)

Stud8 has WAY LOWER Variance than Omaha8

Why do you say that? I would agree with you if we were talking Omaha Hi. I've been playing OE so it's impossible for me to separate the SD for the 2 games but I kind of suspect that LO8 is the slightly lower variance game for a couple reasons. Because the boards are correlated in LO8 a hand like A2xx or A23x has a huge advantage over weaker lows for the low half. Also things tend to get capped more in Stud8 when someone has a strong low and another person has a strong high and someone else is in the hand. This doesn't happen as often in LO8 because people are afraid of getting quartered on the low which rarely happens in Stud8.