Poker Winner Blog

Computing your win or loss rate is simple: Divide the amount of money won or lost by the number of hours you’ve played.

This calculation shows you the average amount won or lost per hour played. In statistics, that figure is called the mean. If you play in different games, you might want to keep records on a game-by-game basis (to determine whether you’re doing better at Hold’em, Lowball, or Omaha) as well as on an overall basis.

All averages are not created equal

Knowing how much you are winning or losing on an hourly basis is important. But it is also important to know whether the mean is representative. In other words, is the mean a good indicator of the data it represents?

If this concept seems confusing, here’s an example to clear things up. Let’s say San Francisco and Omaha each have an average annual temperature of 65°F. But San Francisco rarely gets very warm or very cold, while Omaha is very hot in the summer and bitterly cold in winter. While the mean temperature might be the same for both cities, there is greater variability in Omaha than in San Francisco. San Francisco’s average temperature of 65°F is more representative, because it’s probably closer to the actual temperature on most days than it would be in Omaha.

In poker, two players might win an average of $15 per hour. One of these players might be very aggressive and win large sums of money some days and lose quite a bit on others. A more conservative player might have more modest winning days — and more modest losing days, too. Both of these players, however, could have the same average.

The player who can achieve that win rate while putting less of his money at risk is better off. To measure these fluctuations, you need to know more about those observed values (the amount you won or lost each hour and recorded in your notebook) that were used to calculate your average wins or losses. Once you know that, you can easily measure just how well the mean represents those observed values. That measure helps describe the mean — that’s where standard deviation comes in.

Standard deviation for the mathematically challenged

If you haven’t taken a class in statistics, the term standard deviation might seem awfully frightening and foreboding. It’s not, because you’re about to discover a very easy way to calculate your standard deviation. After all, standard deviation is simply a way of indicating a typical amount by which all the values deviate, or vary, from the mean.

Think of the standard deviation as though it were an adjective modifying a noun (your hourly win rate).

Here’s an example: “She’s wearing a dress.” Dress, of course, is the noun. You can modify that sentence by adding any one of the following adjectives: “She’s wearing a (blue, businesslike, grandmotherly, revealing, designer, hideous) dress. See how substituting one adjective for another can radically change the meaning of that sentence? It’s much the same with the relationship between the standard deviation and the mean.

Before we begin playing with examples, think about your own style of poker- play, and whether it encourages or discourages dramatic fluctuations. In other words, are you a gambler?

Do you usually have big swings from session to session, and are you happy with it? There’s no right or wrong answer. Each player has an inherent amount of risk he or she is willing to tolerate. By monitoring their standard deviations as well as the average amount won per hour, players can choose to slightly reduce their hourly average winnings while substantially reducing their fluctuations.

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