Variance 2

Natural disasters are often called acts of God and many of their victims consider themselves the objects of wrathful intent. I always thought that was silly - of course it's just a matter of luck who gets hit - but losing at poker gave me new respect for the vengeful deity theory. No matter how hard I fought it, I could never completely shake the feeling that when I lost it must mean something. Losing at poker is far less auspicious than having your house blown away by a tornado, but I struggled to internalize the idea that my results depended largely on chance.

Of course variance is easier to swallow when it is the positive kind. Even though I knew I was getting lucky in July, I didn't think about it much. Somehow it seemed fair, well-deserved. But when I started losing in August, I was constantly checking my stats. For a long stretch my bankroll held steady while my performance against expected value plummeted. In other words, I was getting unlucky at exactly the rate I was supposed to be winning. It felt like I had gone from accumulating money to accumulating injustice.

My results drove home the role of luck in poker - and there is no guarantee that it will even out. I had samples of over two hundred thousand hands in which I was significantly above or below expectation. That means, if you are a casual player, your results may diverge widely from expected over your lifetime.