Variance Question

[Daniel72]

I love tournaments, especially on PokerStars, but i hate the variance. What should i play, maybe satellites - there´s not so much luck involved ?!

[DeadlyV18]

I'm assuming you're a NLHE or PLO player.

These games are high variance games, if you can't handle variance these aren't the games for you, especially NLHE or PLO MTT's since they involve the highest amount of variance. Not playing MTT's and sticking to STT's and ring games will also lower the amount of variance.

Try any fixed limed since they involve the lowest variance.

[Assistanc3]

A good change and an excellent game is playing Pot Limit Omaha and Holdem
you still get a few donkeys but you don't have the omg all-in push decision

[mls1024]

If you hate people chasing their hands in holdem, then omaha is not for you.

[Dan Abnormal]

If you dont like varience then poker aint the game for you

Last month i could qualify for the 1k free roll it seemed every game and this month I cant even play anything or Im toast. I dont see how pros can stomache it at high amounts of money cause even when I play the wife with real cards not online, some of the beats are hard to take.

But the thing is they start making you question your game, are you making good calls are you betting right and then the next month or 2 months later you cant lose so you gotta ride it

And its the same for live as online, the first time I played live I killed the next few times I ether broker even or lost big so get used to it and I dont know if I can cause losing BIG SUCKS but I like lIVE much better that online and you gotta wonder since most pros make there money live not ONLINE so I dont know what that says, the are sponsors and get paid but their stats make them look like any other player

[JustClickinButtons]

Cash games are lower variance than tourneys, so you should give those a whirl if you want something that's a little lower variance. As mentioned above limit games, and especially split pot games tend to be lower variance than no limit or pot limit games.

Not sure how many tables you're playing but you can get into the "long run" a lot quicker if you can play more tables, and getting better always helps. If you review your sessions, you can generally pick out a hand where you had an oh crap, could have got more value there, or should have folded there, and then I would have had enough cushion to take that massive cooler and still be up for the day or whatever your circumstance is.

But yeah most people think the "long run" isn't nearly as long as it actually is. I'd say 150k hands is a pretty good sample size in a cash game to for sure say whether you're winning or losing in that particular game, and poker is so dynamic that you can never really get to that point without your game or your opponents game changing and once again being unsure what your true winrate is under the new game conditions.

Just play your best every time you sit down and variance will eventually sort itself out. Just try to control what you can, learn as much as possible, and hopefully you hit the good side of variance soon.

GL