The Space Between

Poker is such a funny game sometimes.

You hear a lot about the term 'variance' when discussing poker and winning and losing. People talk about winning and losing above or below expectation, which is their variance. When someone like Brock Parker or Phil Ivey win two bracelets in a single WSOP, that is running above expectation. Hell, winning a single poker tournament is always going to be 'above expectation'.

In my own game I have had 3 runs where the variance has been huge and the swings even more so.

Two times I have been on the losing end of winning 30% of the hands I showdown, and then today i was on the winning end of it.
the expectation of showdowns is that you will win approximately 50% of them. If you play pretty tight and dont fight for a lot of pots where you don't have a strong hand, this might be a little higher in the long run, something like 53-55%, and transversely, if you are very aggressive and trying to win a lot of pots when you are pretty sure you're hand is not best, you're won money at showdown might be 45-47%. You can still be profitable in this way because of the money you pick up in the little pots that noone contends with you on.

However, when you play HULHE and the difference between the won at showdown stat is 40% (70-30) this will be astronomical in the way the match turns out.
Lets look at a hypothetical: Lets say that we play 100 hands and we are playing 5/10. Lets say the average pot size is $50 when it goes to showdown (both players put in 25). Now, this is probably about right, we could make it a little smaller, more like 45, or a little bigger, like 55, but 50 is a nice round number. Now if we play 200 hands, an average match will have 40% go to showdown. so 80 of the 200 hands (40%*200=80) is the number of pots we see showdown.

Lets look at what happens when they both win 50%...
its a wash! haha.

now lets look at something more typical, which will have a decided impact on the match: one person wins 55% and the other wins 45%
the difference is 10%, so player A, who won 55%, will win 4 more pots in total in this match, 44-36. if we remember that the average pot was $50, this difference is going to be $400 ($200 of which was Player B's money). So this means that by only winning 45% of showdowns, player B needs to make up $200 somewhere else in the match. This is definitely possible, but certainly not easy.

Now, how about 70-30.
the difference is 40%, so player A will now win 56 pots to Player B's 24. But now instead of player B needing to make up a $200 difference, he is now going to have to make up an $800 difference, which, imo, is impossible to do in the nonshowdown pots unless Player A puts in some action during the hand but only showsdown top pair or better.

That was actually a longer winded intro to what i wanted to mention coupled with that:

When this starts to happen, not only do we have to make up this 800 that we lost due to variance, we also have to battle the weaktight shell we might go into by missing value bets when we assume our opponent always has it, or the opposite, when we spew because we think 'he cant ALWAYS have it' and we bloat pots with marginal hands.

There really isnt a lesson here, just something to think about.

LQ

Currently Reading: Michio Kaku - The Physics of the Impossible
Currently Listening: Dave Matthews Band - Busted Stuff