You will have read and heard many times that you should not play when you are tired or disturbed for any reason or if a particular poker table is quite tough with good players inhabiting it. Game conditions and your own mental and physical state can seriously impede your chances of winning money and you cannot afford to allow this to happen because your edge is not as great as what you think it is.

This is why many poker players gripe about losses and bad beats. Poker being what it is, most players over estimate their own ability and seem quite shocked when what they expected to happen (winning) does not happen. The amount of luck in poker is absolutely massive and I do mean MASSIVE.

Luck is by far the most important factor in the game over the short term and luck actually dictates your results to a large extent rather than skill. Put another way, the standard deviation is providing your results in the short term and not your ability.

The situation is a damn site worse for the “deluded expert”. You know who I am talking about here and heaven forbid that I could easily be talking about you. The guy has read countless poker books and feels that he really knows the game of Texas Hold’em poker online inside out. He has made money playing at low limits in the past but suddenly the games have got a whole lot tougher and unknown to him whatever edge he had previously has just evaporated.

What this means is that whenever your edge is reduced then your fluctuations are greater thus you need a bigger bankroll to ensure survival.

With the poker boom in full swing and poker being such big news then the number of players who fantasize and have ambitions of playing poker for a living have grown alarmingly. But many players are making gross errors by jumping into playing poker full time without first proving that they can in fact beat the game in the long term.

The standard deviation in poker can create illusions and mirages that trap the unwary and the inexperienced. It has happened to many players in the past and will happen to many more in the future.

One piece of advice that I would say to any player who had ambitions of turning professional would be this. Do not give up the day job until you are categorically 100% sure that you can in fact make the game pay and think twice even then! I really hope that you enjoyed this little series on variance in poker. What I hope more than anything else is that it helps you to come to terms with the enormity of this particular problem.

The problem of swings and variance in poker is magnified with certain types of people over others and especially the ones who are risk averse. So all the best for the future and remember who your enemies are.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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