The Nature of Variance II

I'm writing this at the tail end of my session tonight. All I have left open is the 10r. I just got donked out of virtually everything.

I'm feeling pretty inspired right now for some reason. I can't believe how many mistakes players still make these days in poker. With all the training sites, books, forums, and other free information out there about poker I sometimes worry that the average player will become good enough that making money in poker would become very difficult.

Then I have a session like tonight where its as if I'm in the twilight zone. Its one fish after another trying hard to give their money away. I made some really quality reads and got my money in time and time again far ahead and watched as virtually each time I lost to some ridiculous card. This is when I realize my fears are irrational and the ocean of poker is constantly ripe with fishes. Phew.

However, this was my second session since the $50 6max 2nd place finish and I'm cashless in all MTTs and running horribly in the 45 and 180 mans. I've watched nearly 10% of my bankroll slip away in just two completely disastrous sessions.

I think this is where most otherwise very intelligent and talented players fail in poker. Its easy to plan out a bankroll and a schedule and go at it full force. But when variance kicks in it challenges you in ways you really are almost never prepared for.

You continually get the money in good and continually lose and you tell yourself, "ok this will end soon, I'm cool, just gotta keep playing amazing", but to your horror the unrealness continues. Eventually it can become overwhelming for some people and suddenly their hopes of making a living in poker seem like a distant dream. Irrational thoughts towards the game creep into their minds and they may start to assume they are just doomed to lose. At this point it can be very easy for their poker train to become completely derailed.

Lets make something very clear: This is a tough game. Its a very tough game. You can lose over long periods of time where you are playing nearly perfect while someone else can be winning over a long period of time playing very poorly. This is the phenomenon known as variance and it can be very difficult to understand. So difficult, in fact, that most people resort to simple but completely irrational explanations.

We've all heard players at the table remark something like, "thats Jokerstars for ya!", or, "only on full tilt", after an unlikely event occurs. Its more comfortable for these people to rationalize unlikely things in this way rather than try to imagine how variance works. This is why these are losing players. They play with emotion rather than intelligence. They play with "feel" rather than proven probabilities. Most of the money that profitable players make in poker comes from players with these mindsets.

So whats my point here? Well, after I've had a couple consecutive horrendous sessions I may be experiencing a plethora of negative emotions. I may become completely disgusted with the game or I may start to feel some irrational thoughts of my own creeping up.

I'm not a mentally tough person. I may be stronger some days than others but when I'm running badly in poker it takes a toll on me. I know there are a lot of other people who are the same way.

There is one thing all the best poker players have in common: mental toughness. Some might also call it perseverance. However you want to label it, its a quality that allows them to be completely unaffected by negative results (variance). They bounce back again and again and play their best game 100% of the time.

This is an ability most people don't naturally posess. I'm a crybaby by nature and poker conflicts with that. I've been trying very hard over the last four years to learn to handle my emotions and keep them in check.

One thing I've realized over the last few years is that I'm not special. No one is. Nothing that is happening to any player at any time is special in any way.

Poker and the short-term randomness of the cards are a very chaotic thing. The individual results any one player experiences over a certain period of time are only one microscopic and insignificant slice of all that chaos. Its silly to think that somehow "the poker gods" are singling you out and picking on you.

The bottom line is this: Stay strong. Realize that nothing you're experiencing is "special" in any way. This game is unbelievably random and chaotic in the short run and trying to look for patterns is completely useless. The ONLY edges we have amidst all the chaos are these:

1) Our ability to NOT make mistakes
2) Our ability to force our opponents into making mistakes
3) Getting the money in ahead as often as possible

So if these three things aren't your top three priorities chances are you're not going to succeed.

Writing posts like these help me to cope with my own variance. Getting all these thoughts out of my head is very helpful. I'm not the kind who can just sit back and take it up the ass and be like "meh, no biggie". I'm the type who has to sit down and figure out why things are happening. I break everything down piece by piece until I have my answers. And my answer this time is the exact same as it always is when I'm in this situation: just keep doing exactly what I'm doing and I'll eventually see the results I want.