This stat would be "lower is better"

A really good but wild 2/5 player may have a StnDev of $600/hr and win rate of $60/hr. He has a 10.

Dont you think he would his overall poker life / stress level would be better if he had a StnDev of $400/hr and win rate of $60/hr giving him a 6.66?

Wouldn't you rather have a lower StnDev if you could do it without sacrificing much, if anything, in terms of win rate? The lower this stat is the easier your poker life is. The less stress you have. The less amount of times you leave the poker room pissed off and feeling frustrated the rest of the day. The less often you feel like poker sucks and sucks the life out of you.

No, lower SDev is not "better." It just is. Sure, it makes life less stressful, but this game is about winning the most money, not the most pots, or having the smoothest lines.

If given a choice between A and B, of course I'd rather have B, but realistically if we are tweaking our style to avoid variance, we are probably not maximizing EV, so the choice is more like $600/hr Sdev with a WR of $60/hr or $400 SDev with a WR of $55/hr. In that case, the first is clearly better.

Without knowing my StdDev stat, I would assume that I’m the second of the two players you two are talking about. The one who sacrifices a bit of WR in order to reduce stress and keep a more steady, reliable source of part-time income flowing. For me, I don’t mind this trade off, but I’ll probably lean toward more aggro/higher variance/slightly higher WR in a year or two.

I don't understand the variance / standard deviation / math / etc. *at all* so I won't get involved on that end.

All's I know is that I've produced ~12 bb/hr and ~4 bb/hr and everything in-between over different 1000+ hour samples, and with is what I believe are considered low SDs. And that I have *zero* confidence whatsoever in my overall ~7 bb/hr winrate. Coming into last year, if you hadda offered me a 2018 at 7 bb/hr, I would have *snap* accepted (as it turns out, that's what I ended up doing, which honestly took me by surprise as I was expecting much less). If you hadda offered me 7 bb/hr for 2019, I still would have snap accepted (and at this point, I wish someone would have offered me that, lol).

GI'mgladthemathisalotmoreconfidendinmyresultsthanI amG

That takes my full circle and right back to the fact that people playing super tight and/or short stacked are more at the mercy of the luck of the cards and needing to have winners at showdown constantly and they will experience much less consistent results.

Consistent results is what poker players mean when they say “variance” no matter the actual mathematical definition is

I won't reply to the prior posts because Garick represented my points perfectly well, and I have nothing to add.

It's an important stat which I frequently use to compare different types of games. It's the stat that made me decide not to count cards anymore because poker is significantly better. It works very well for comparing games with scalable bet sizing.

BTW, the square of that stat is the expected length of your breakeven stretches running at -1 standard deviations. Not sure I worded that correctly, but it means you are approximately 15% likely to lose over your next 25 hours.

I don't know what consistent results means to you, which is the problem with using an imprecise definition. The mathematical definition means something very specific and there is no confusion or miscommunication due to using it.

It's fine to use in conversation, but if you are trying to make an argument you really shouldn't be using such a vague definition. You're trying to build a house with a weak foundation.

No, Im making a poker players argument and being very clear about what i mean. You are making a mathematicians argument.

No, you are making a Mike argument, and you are responding to things browni didn't say in order to take the opportunity to do so.

I replied to this

I'm a poker player, too, not a mathematician. This is entry level statistics (I know because I had to do this stuff helping my wife with her homework, although I never took a course myself) that every poker player should study, and it's very accessible if you got through high school math.

"Consistent results" doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to me, and it doesn't mean the same thing to me as it does to Bob, or Mellissa, or Omar.

But like I said before I'm not getting into the Tag/Lag nonsense again. What matters is standard deviation and win-rate. I'm not arguing which player type generally has higher/lower stats. My point is only that GG is not more at the mercy of luck than you. His luck factor is about the same as yours despite your drastically different styles.

I agree that it's very likely GG's fluctuation in win-rate is more likely due to changing game conditions than simple variance.

Alright. Just hit the 500 hour mark for tracking and all action was at 2/5. Started tracking on 12/14 in large part because of this thread and here are the results:

http://imgur.com/a/ySQdu8D

Edit-having difficulty getting the image to post. Anyone know the issue?

No clue. But just upload it to imgur.

Holy ****! Nice results, typesick.

That's one hell of a heater. I'm sure you're a really good player, but you have to know you're going to come back to earth at some point soon, right?

Hmmm, probably a small amount. It was actually a good amount higher until the last week or so. Got a little out of line in some big pots deep. But yeah, obviously have no complaints overall. Could certainly take a dip.

Thanks man.

Nice results! What happened before these 500 hours? Assume you must have thousands of hours tracked before these last 500 if have this good of results?


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What are you guys using to track results?

Paper. I'd use bodies like a real man, but that's frowned upon in this century.

I use a combination of a site called "check your bets" that I stared on a decade ago for a reason I can't remember, and a google sheet that I can update from anywhere.

I used to track years ago but stopped because I thought I was making too many decisions based on numbers. Not a winner on the day? Welp, better extend the length of the session so I can book a win. Finally an hourly at the exact amount I was striving for? Welp, better not risk this big all-in bluff, because if called, it'd be a big setback for the hourly. Eventually I just decided to stop tracking and focused on playing each hand as well as possible. Basically kept that strategy until I came across this thread and got tempted to do my own 500 hour challenge.

Just imagine that a 12BB/h winner has about the same chance of breaking even over the course of 500 hours as winning at 24BB/h. I don't recall ever having a 500 hour breakeven stretch, and I'm not a 12BB/h winner.

Very impressive. Are these sessions spread across different markets? If not do you mind sharing what market they were? I'm not sure which is sicker, the 82% cash rate or the 24 BB/hr. Do your other comments imply that this was a one off challenge and you wont continue to track?

If you want to embed imgur, you right click on the image, then click view image. Once you see the whole image, you copy the web address ending in jpg.

I could be wrong, but I believe he plays in L.A. The games in L.A. are crazy soft. Soft like Ive never seen before....but nobody can beat 2/5 for $120/hr. Not even in L.A.

From what I saw out there I do believe $75-85/hr is possible. Maybe even a tad more, but $120? I dont believe it. No disrespect to Typesick at all though. He's clearly a beast to do that for even 500 hours.

would be hard considering the max buy for $2-3 is only $100 at commerce and $200 max buy for $3-5. $2-5 NL doesnt exist at commerce, it might in some other LA room im not thinking of at the moment.