The two types of tournament variance l Strategy with Barry

Variance in poker is a funny thing. Variance in tournament poker is bonkers. 

I've just got off the back of a very interesting week at the tables, which I think highlights what makes tournament poker different. Across four online sessions, I possibly had my worst ever week with Pocket Aces. I believe I got dealt them 15 times and lost with them 10 of those times. Yes, it was bad enough that I started counting them. 

Now, before that sounds horrifying, one caveat. In tournaments, especially when the stacks are getting quite shallow, I tend to flat opens with AA. This is, by design, an attempt to get a third stack into the pot, ideally having them squeeze. This means that, of those ten losing hands, I'd say most of them were actually multi-way pots. Still a very big, highly unlikely cooler to lose that often, but obviously I am less of a favourite against three or more opponents. 

However, a funny thing happened towards the end of the week. I came second in a pretty big tournament for my buy-in level, which erased all of the week's downswing and then some. 

And one of the key hands in this final tournament was a chip leader versus chip leader pot near the bubble. I had QQ, and my opponent had... AA. The Queen hit the flop, and we held, giving us a monster stack we comfortably took all the way to 2nd place.

So the big question is: was AA my lucky or unlucky hand last week?

Distribution Variance vs Timing Variance

What this comes down to is the two different types of variance we face in tournaments. We have the variance of "did we get dealt the best hand?" and we have the variance of "did we get dealt the best hand often enough in a single tournament?" 

Last week I was very unlucky in terms of the hands I was dealt overall. This I will call distribution variance.  But I was incredibly lucky with the timing of the few hands that went my way. This I will call timing variance. 

I've had plenty of sessions before where I felt I was running incredibly well, only to look at my results to see that I had a terrible session. The problem was that all my good variance were spread out across every single tournament, rather than concentrated in a single tournament. However, it was the opposite for me last week. If the hands I had been dealt last week were in a cash game, it would have been a horrific week for me. But because I had enough fortune with hands dealt to me in a single tournament, I was on cloud nine. 

So while many would say I was unlucky last week, particularly when it came to Pocket Aces, I consider myself to be running incredibly well.