• Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Estimate
• Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Present Value
• Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Equation
• Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Formula

Variance Formula. The formula for variance of a is the sum of the squared differences between each data point and the mean, divided by the number of data values. This calculator uses the formulas below in its variance calculations. For a Complete Population divide by the size n. Using a poker variance calculator is a skill that every poker player should have. You can calculat the variance for different stakes, tournaments, and see if you can handle it. Variance:The Bane of Every Poker Player's Life The fact or quality of being different, divergent, or inconsistent”.

Variance:The Bane of Every Poker Player's Life

The fact or quality of being different, divergent, or inconsistent”

As soon as I first picked up the game back in 2005 it was obvious just how painful my relationship with luck was going to be if I ever wanted to play this game for a living. Looking back from today I really had no idea just how bad things could possibly get. Come to think of it, neither did the entire poker community!

My first poker experience came through online MTTs, and the standard advice back in the day was for professionals to have at least one hundred tournament buy ins in their bankroll. Little did we know that this was to prove way too cavalier. Especially as the games became tougher and tougher.

These days people are now more likely to suggest at least three hundred buy ins for tournaments, and at least fifty buy ins for NL cash games, with PLO needing even more. This is not conservative either, it's supposed to be a basic minimum.

I can say for certain now, as an eleven year veteran of the game that variance is still not understood by the vast majority of casual players. The main problem being that they are not able to play the volume required to ride through the swings in reasonable time, with a downswing lasting months,maybe years rather than weeks for cash game players. Recreational live tournament players will possibly not even manage to play enough over the rest of their lives to get any kind of an accurate understanding of just how good they are.

Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Estimate

So how can we better understand the variance we can expect to experience?

What Does a Variance Calculator Do Exactly?

The calculator is a tool which can simulate millions of hands or tournaments, and scientifically show us the results from a best case scenario to the worst case.

It is never going to prove anything with one hundred percent certainty, but it will show us close enough to suit our purposes giving us an idea of just how much luck is involved, and what kind of time scale is involved to play through an average downswing.

By inputting various statistics from our database we will also be able to see over a particular sample size what percentage of the time we can expect to be in profit. Along with advice on required bankroll size to stay within a reasonable risk of ruin percentage.

In today's tougher games, much is being said about how the mental game side of poker is becoming more important to maximize your results.

The Cash Game Variance Calculator

The best application out there today looks to be here.

Let's take a look at how the cash game calculator works.

Here I want to use as an example a recreational player who works full time so only finds time for 25000 hands per month. This player has a decent win rate of 2.5BB/100. Not to be confused with BB/100 which is twice the BB/100 that you need to enter.

Here we can see some samples showing that even being a decent player, over a small sample size of 25000 hands there's still a fairly high chance of losing money.

Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Present Value

There is also a report showing some useful metrics.

As we can see from all this data, 25000 hands for many casual players can take quite a long time to play, and even if they know they are decent enough to win well in the games they play in, there is still a high chance of being down money.

The Tournament Variance Calculator

The best application out there today looks to be here.

Even new players to the game who read about poker, and study the game to any extent will likely have heard about the extreme variance experienced by MTT players.

In this example our hero is a recreational player who finds time for 1500 tournaments in a year.

HisROI % is a healthy 35%, but nothing spectacular. He plays only $5 buy in events with an average of five thousand entrants. Each tournament pays out prizes to the top fifteen percent of finishers.

Here we can see that there is roughly a twenty five percent chance that he will be down money at the year's end. Fifty percent of the time he can expect to have won more than $2285, with the worst case being a total loss of more than $3400.

Can you imagine what an unprepared casual player would be thinking if they had lost $3400? This is why we need to do this work away from the table.

Here is a random selection of twenty samples. As you can see there is still the possibility of going on a huge heater and making a nice profit. But there's no guarantees!

Similar to the cash game calculator we also get a detailed chart of statistical data.

Conclusion

In both examples we saw a competent player stand a fairly high chance of losing money over a single month,and over a full year.

Once you have experimented with different permutations you may even wish to change your game of choice. One point which stands out more than any other is how live poker players need the patience of a saint. They simply cannot look at poker in terms of months. Even for the professionals only hardcore cash game grinders can expect to feel a degree of certainty after a year's play. Live MTT players can expect a long wait, there just aren't enough days in the week.

For online players the long run can come around much sooner, but for those of you with jobs and family commitments it can still be a frustratingly long time before you see the fruits of your labor.

Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Equation

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Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Formula

Sit and gos are notorious for their variance. The variance itself isn’t always the real problem, though, as the frustration can send any player over the edge. Sit and go players, depending on their particular limits and games, are accustomed to swings that can range from 5-20 buy ins on a very regular basis.

There are a lot of swings in cash games, but they don’t even compare to what a lot of sit and go players have to deal with. Heads up sit and go players have the most variance, as is to be expected. Trailing heads up sit and gos in variance are the short handed and full ring games. Full ring sit and gos have significantly less variance than short handed games, and short handed games make heads up games seem like the worst experience in the world.

Interestingly enough, the games with the most variance are also the ones that will generally yield the highest returns. One of the lessons to learn with sit and gos is that the more risk you take, the more reward you should expect, if you are successful. The flaw in this approach is that you will inevitably fail a fair amount of the time if you play the games with wild variance. Play what you are comfortable with, and always be ready for the inevitable bad days.

Proper bankroll management is of the utmost important for SNG players. There are a lot of casual players who enjoy playing sit and gos from time to time, but these are not the people who need to worry about their bankrolls. As a serious player who wants to win, you should be paying extremely close attention to your bankroll at all times.

In addition to monitoring your poker sit and go bankroll, you should also have the self-discipline to either move down in limits or take a break from sit and gos if things aren’t going well. This is a concept that is lost on a large number of SNG players. It is easy to start with a sound bankroll, it is easy to move up in limits when things are going well, but it takes a real effort to rework your game when you run into a few obstacles.

Realistic Variance in Sit and Gos

While your limits, skill level, and type of game can alter what variance would be considered normal, there are a few general guidelines for downswings in sit and gos. If you are going way over these numbers, you should at least consider changing something up. Normal variance is something that is completely unpreventable and it happens to every single player in the world, but abnormal variance is an unnecessary hurdle that can be improved upon.

Heads up sit and gos are the most brutal when it comes to variance. You might think that heads up players would be able to win with greater consistency because they are in a one on one environment, and while that is true in the long run, all that it takes for a big downswing in heads up games is a few lost coin flips.

You could have any number of opponents dead in the water, but you could also lose 10 coin flips in a row. Sometimes nothing will go your way - every poker player has been there, but the problems and losses are multiplied in a heads up environment. Small stakes heads up players can easily lose 10-20 buy ins, while mid stakes and high stakes players can lose double this. A solid player won’t have too many stretches of sizable losses, but no one is immune to a big swing in heads up sit and go tournaments.

Short handed sit and go players fall right in between the variance found in heads up and full ring games, as any logical player would suspect. The jump in variance is more dramatic when compared to heads up games than full ring games.

If you are a full ring player, expect a slight bump in how streaky your wins and losses are in short handed games, but don’t look for extremely dramatic differences. Five-ten buy in swings are quite normal in these games, with 10+ buy in downswings not being something worth crying about. Once you hit a 20 buy in downswing, however, it is probably time to reassess your skills.

Full ring sit and gos are the safest route for any player who is worried about losing buy ins. If you prefer to win your money in smaller, more consistent amounts, full ring SNGs are the game for you. The trade off is that full ring players make a lower ROI. You can't pound out the volume in full ring games that you can in heads up or short handed games. For most players in full ring SNGs, downswings rarely extend past 10 buy ins. Would a downswing of over 10 buy ins be a reason for panic? Definitely not, but you shouldn’t find that they happen all that often.