Is this what is meant by variance?

jugglegeek

Hand History #370704363 (20:51 11/05/2011)

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
aces4m	Small blind		£0.02	£0.02	£1.36
Stuwie	Big blind		£0.04	£0.06	£1.53
OhDancing1	Sit out
	Your hole cards	9 A
07121970	Call		£0.04	£0.10	£4.15
les1969	Call		£0.04	£0.14	£5.33
jugglegeek	Raise		£0.20	£0.34	£3.25
aces4m	Fold
Stuwie	Call		£0.16	£0.50	£1.37
07121970	Fold
les1969	Raise		£0.32	£0.82	£5.01
jugglegeek	Call		£0.16	£0.98	£3.09
Stuwie	Call		£0.16	£1.14	£1.21
Flop
		6 9 3
Stuwie	All-in		£1.21	£2.35	£0.00
les1969	Fold
jugglegeek	Call		£1.21	£3.56	£1.88
Stuwie	Show	3 3
jugglegeek	Show	9 A
Turn
		2
River
		6
Stuwie	Win	Full House, 3s and 6s	£3.29		£3.29

AMYBR

No thats a cooler i guess.  Am sorry but in all honestly its a fold pre for me.  You have no advantage with the raise or the limp behind.  Why bother bud?

unknown_username

No, unless it's the third or forth time on the trot where you've made the same play and the same thing has happened, in which case I would say yes. This is simply a case of someone with a pretty naff hand getting lucky after an "all-in" calling decision. The "variance" is caused by not only the randomness of the cards turning up, but also your own raise and the opponent's playing style. Calling all in pre-flop with A,9o is the sort of thing I would think is called for when you're short stacked in a tournament or a SnG, not at a cash table.

Consider the numbers . . . you need one of 6 cards (out of 50 unseen) to make a pair (slightly better than evens, 6/50 divided by five chances), and he needed one of 2 cards to make his set (4-1, 1/(25/5)). So with your two different and higher cards there was a greater chance of you coming out of the round with a higher pair than your opponent coming out of it with a set. These are not the only considerations, as there's the possibility on both sides of endung up with the cards needed to make a straight etc

I've had a case recently during a session of 72 hands played, where I lost nearly 200 big blinds in losing 7 out of the last 10 hands I played. Three of these were losing to players hitting an 8-1 or greater draw, after I'd raised big with a fairly hefty mathematical advantage. In theory, I should only lose one hand of this sort out of every eight hands that I play, but here I am losing three on the trot. And of course it doesn't mean that I'm going to win the next 21 similar hands that come up.

Overall, a volatile game with no guarantee that the best player always wins . . . :-)

AMYBR

Your preaching to the choir bud.

But my game is dominately live, I think I saw this same set up in back to back hands last night.

How about this for fun?  44 vs A3 on a 245r flop, sat deep.  No fun at all, no improvement.

The sample size you use is pretty small bud (72).  When talking of odds/%'s were talking of likelyhood over sample, rather than balancing within a smaller sample size of hands.

It is bloody unpleasent over all though.  I played a £60 FO, 14 handed last night, gathered lots of chips early.  Lost half of my stack in a AK vs 9's flip.  Then blinds are pretty huge, I'm on BB.  Douche limps UTG (limps most hands) I find AcKc in the BB no one else has come in.  My stack size is a mandatory jam 11BB's he calls with your dreaded 3's, he fades all trouble, turn brings me 4 to nut flush, but the 3's stay their course.  Ugly 3's

unknown_username

In Response to Re: Is this what is meant by variance?:

The sample size you use is pretty small bud (72).  When talking of odds/%'s were talking of likelyhood over sample . . . .

Of course it is . . . . you can't draw any mathematical conclusions from a sample of this size - I just use it as a personal example of how results can be skewed, both within your historical playing results and within individual sessions or tournaments etc. In my own experience, just half a percent of the hands I've played to date at the cash tables account for more than 100% of the losses I've incurred. Pareto's law doesn't even come close.