How to Become Immune to Variance
Online poker is played at great speed and during full ring games you could see up to three hundred hands per hour if you play multiple tables. Texas Hold’em poker is particularly prone to swings in fortune as many players are happy to get into flipping situations with +EV shoves ever more marginal as the differences between a skilled and weak player decreases. As you play more frequently you will encounter variance more often, you must develop immunity to the negative impact variance can have on your poker game if you are to succeed at poker long term.
Our negative reaction to variance has many facets. The main part of variance is the sense of injustice. When an opponent makes a terrible play and you call them to task only to lose, it is easy to think that online poker is rigged to make the bad players remain in the game. The reality is that a five percent one outer will happen five per cent of the time so you are not a victim of a scam, unfortunately you are just a victim of mathematics. Think positively if this happens as ninety five per cent of the time you would win in the same situation.
The fear of watching your bankroll shrink can also cause negativity to affect the way you play poker. The way to become immune to this sort of variance is to believe in your poker game and always play within limits that are comfortable to your bankroll. I get worried when I am on a downswing because I do not want to be the only winning player ever to lose everything and become the anecdote of gamblers who discuss a good player for whom everything went wrong. Yes it is an over reaction, but the worry is there nonetheless. I control this by taking a break from poker if I feel this desperation beginning to emerge; I take a break before returning to the tables feeling better and ready to win. The focus returns to winning rather than losing and that helps me get my best poker game back.
As you get more experienced you will notice yourself playing good poker regardless of temporary swings. The better equipt you are mentally for the gamble the better. I have found that some players could have $1 million and play well even if they were down to their final $10,000 and some are more affected by small losses simply because they value money so highly. I am more of a skilled poker student than a hardened gambler so working on treating the poker chips as chips rather than cash is taking time. As I improve on this mental approach to poker and money my resistance to negative thoughts because of variance is increasing.
I find that updating my poker blog regularly is an effective way to get the bad beats you encounter out of your system so you can move on. Obviously losing the money in the pot hurts a little when you feel you should have won, but you will inflict bad beats of your own at time goes by. Providing you are getting your money in favourite enough times you should show a profit in the end. Real money cash games are about long term vision and effective bankroll management. A fat profit at the end of the month helps you stay immune to the emotional turmoil variance can cause.
By Malcolm Clarke
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- Cash Game Survival Kit
- Why Online Poker Can Be Trusted
Tags: cash games, online poker, poker, poker metagame, poker variance