Theory of Variance

I am working on what I call the Theory of Variance. My theory is that when variance hits you will lose more money to variance than you will win. People may not realize it but Variance in poker goes both ways, i.e. you can have variance when you play lesser hands and you hit the board to win and you can have variance when you have the best hands going in and you end up losing to the 2 outer on the river.

People seem to only remember Variance when they are losing to it. The strange thing about poker is that you will remember the losing hands much more vividly and longer than you remember your winning hands. I guess that is because you expect your good hands to win and when they don’t it makes a bigger impact on you. Thus, players only refer to variance when it is going against them.

Variance does work for you, too. How many times have you won w/ 2/7off (the hammer) or played 2/3 suited from the big blind and hit the wheel? Probably more than you think but you just don’t think much about it because two hands ago your aces got cracked by the donkey playing his 2/3 offsuit after your preflop raise and he hit the wheel.

My theory dictates you will lose more to variance than you will win. A couple of reasons for that is that when variance hits you will,

1. Tilt

2. Convince yourself that it will soon turn your way and you will keep playing long after you should have stopped or you will start playing hands that are not +EV.

I am still developing this theory but I am convinced that the gist of it is true. There are more eloquent writers out there and players more knowledgeable about the game than I and I would appreciate it if they could expand on this.

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I turned things around at Poker.com as I was able to play for quite a while and ended my session with a modest profit. The cards were playing fair except for two hands in a 4 hand stretch where my Aces and Kings got cracked by lesser hands. It made me go from a winning session to a losing one but I didn’t tilt and I kept plugging away until I turned things around and was up again. It just bugs me to have the two best hands (preflop) cracked by people calling raises with junk. Rewards poor play.

Variance is still slapping me in the face at Bodog. I didn't play at all on Wednesday but when I sat down at the tables today I lost two hands when the donkeys hit their 3 outer on the river. The worse one was when I raised PF w/ pocket 10s and turned the set on the flop. The hand was going beautifully as there were no cards larger than the 10 on the flop, turn or river and no flush draws. My 10s were looking good until the 9 on the river made a gutshot straight for the guy holding pocket 8s. That one hurt and I quit playing right after that but not before I had dropped my buy-in.