https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/
This seems to be a popular tool for figuring out variance. What standard deviation would your all-in adjusted bb/100 be?
For example, for 6max it’s estimated to be around ~100 for your actual winrate. What would this be for all-in adjusted? ~80?
It will depend on how many hands you have played, if you use a tracker you can calculate it yourself. https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-deviation-calculator.html
This can all be done in excel too, and there is lots of information online if you get stuck.
EDIT: I actually just checked and PT4 has a StdDev column for BB/100 Currency, and All-in currency. Right click your table and select configure report. Then search for standard deviation.
Weed
This is an incredibly small sample size I know. Just started playing 1/3 this year after mainly playing online tournaments for fun. I’ve been studying diligently and trying to apply what I’ve learned at the table.
I just do not understand what the graph and results are telling me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Currently at 58BB/100 @1600 hands which again I know from reading this sub is a minute sample size. Just looking for some insight into the graph/results.
Typically, live play will mean you're seeing between 30-50 hands per hour. In your case, this will mean that you've seen somewhere in the region of 7,000 hands. This is an incredibly low number to make any significant, reliable assumptions about the StDev of your win-rate. The data set simply isn't large enough to be approaching what we'd consider a normal distribution yet.
As for your question, "Is this high standard deviation just an expression of the volatility of low limit cash games, or is this my problem?"...It's just too early to tell!
Commonly...
- 6max, your StDev will be about ~90bb/100 hands.
- FullRing, your StDev will be about ~80/100 hands.
Check out this post for some helpful Statistical Tools for analysis of your game.
Disclaimer: All of what follows applies only to winning players. For non-winning players, none of this matters a whit.
I'm not going to discuss actual, hard numbers as most people familiar with StdDev in poker will declare something that can be interpreted as "StdDev is completely useless until you have 100k+ hands," -- a sentiment I disagree with in principle. You can gain some insight with far fewer hands.
What I'll discuss is the relevance of StdDev in poker. So, what does StdDev tell you about your game? StdDev is an indicator of your variance. Your variance, in turn, is effected by many things. Two of the most important are:
- Your skill relative to your opponents
- Your long-run winrate at a given stake/structure.
As your skill increases relative to your opponents, you'll win more. As you win more, your long-run winrate increases. Simple. As your winrate increases, your variance decreases. The best .05/.10 player in the world might have a huge winrate measured in tens of BB/100 online, and a very low variance.
But skilled players tend to move up in stakes. As you get better at poker and move up in stakes, you'll find that your skill relative to your opponents actually decreases. You may still have an edge, but your edge will be smaller. This will reduce your winrate, thereby increasing your variance and your StdDev.
That is not to say that when your StdDev is high you need to work on your game. I mean, yes -- you need to work on your game, all the time, but it has nothing to do with your StdDev. The best online $25.00/$50.00 player in the world is probably going to have a long-term winrate that is much lower, probably measured in the low single digits in terms of BB/100. They have an edge, but their edge is smaller. So their variance and StdDev are going to be higher than the world's best $0.05/$0.10 player. Does that mean that the .05.10 player is better than the 25/50 player? Hardly.
Variance is also dependant on your game style. Set-mining nits will have a lower variance than a loose-aggressive player. That also doesn't mean that the set-miner is better than the LAG. Nor does it mean the opposite.
In other words, StdDev has no direct relation to your absolute skill at poker. Other variables do. StdDev only has an indirect (at best) relation to your skill.
My advice is to forget about StdDev as a diagnostic tool, and look at it as a mathematical curiosity.