Variance Surfin'

So how good at poker do you think you really are?

The cool dudes over at Evplusplus.com came up with a variance simulator.

Let's say you're crushing no limit cash games at 3 big blinds/100 hands over 100K hands.

Here are 100 different possibilities how your actual profit graph could turn out:

So, there's one lucky guy that turns +$13K profit at $0.50/$1 no limit hold'em 

(snorting coke off of a model's ass and negotiating sponsorship deals) 

while an equally skilled dude (kicked out by his wife because of his gambling problem and now contemplating suicide) could have lost -$10K over the same sample size...

It's a very, very brutal game.

Next time you feel like the ultimate poker genius or like the dirtiest degenerate gambler, chances are that you're only surfing the waves of variance...