Variance...

[Boobie Lover]

I do think that people do blame variance too often and don't try to improve your own play.

Although, your argument that winning players will experience less variance is wrong IMO. Some of the highest winners who are very laggy probably have a much higher standard deviation than a less winner who is a standard tag because they are making much more high variance plays, and their swings will be much more than the person who will make less in the long run.

[Reel Deal]

I stopped reading half way through the first sentence because I have ADD.

[Talking Poker]

It really depends on what kind of timeframe you are looking at... but if you mean over a given session or week or month, then yeah, I absolutely DO believe in variance. I've seen it enough to know it exists. By "variance," I don't just mean running cold and getting sucked out a lot on either - I also mean running hot, hitting lots of flops, and having your hands that should win 80% of the time win 100% of the time over that stretch. It goes both ways.

I do think that people are too quick to blame losing on variance and attribute winning to skill though. You never see a guy (JD included) go on a tear and chalk it up to variance and then run really cold and say that's because he sucks.

I guess for me, I've played enough that I think I have a pretty good idea of how I should be running over a particular session (or month or whatever), if there was no variance. Without having a selective memory and only thinking about the bad beats like a lot of players do, I think I can pretty accurately say if I've been running hot or cold, as compared to what "average" would be over the long run.

But back to the initial question: Yes, of course I believe in variance. I'm smart enough to know that it's more than just an excuse for losing though.

[ashmc2]

I use this excuse all the time. Especially when I really get my ass kicked for a few days. Then I remember that my ADD was kicked in and I was calling everything down because I wasn't watching the board attentively.

No really - variance can only be noted with your normal playing style over a large set of hands. Any nontypical plays shouldn't be added to the set win or lose. But shit plays is a whole new sub-set to calculate.

[Reel Deal]

Hey, look, there goes a squirrel in my back yard...

[MAYHEM45]

AEQ needs to post his AIM buddy icon.