Poker Variance Calculator

How much can luck swing your results? How big can your downswing get? How long until your win rate "converges"? Pick your numbers and see what variance actually looks like.

Example filled in: a 3 bb/100 winner in a typical 6-max game, over 50,000 hands. Change anything.

Or start from a player:

Step 1: What is your win rate?

Win rate, in big blinds per 100 hands ()3 bb/100

Below zero is a losing player, zero is break-even.

Step 2: How much does your game swing?

Or set it yourself: , in bb/100100

How far a typical 100 hands swings either way. Your tracker shows yours.

Step 3: Over how many hands?

Hands to simulate50k
Sample paths to draw50
With the example filled inAhead 75 in 100

After 50,000 hands at 3 bb/100, you finish ahead 75 times in 100 and behind 25. Luck alone decides which one you get.

Out of 100 players like you, after 50,000 hands:
  • 75 finish ahead
  • 25 finish behind

50 sample paths over 50k handsOne random sample (seed 20261005); draw another for a new one

+7,8400−3,409050k hands
Ends ahead (bold: the luckiest)Ends behind (bold: the unluckiest)Expected
Expected+1,500 bbExact
Chance of finishing ahead74.9%Exact
5th percentile−2,178 bbExact
95th percentile+5,178 bbExact
Median+1,500 bbExact
Worst downswing seen−3,974 bbIn these 50 paths
Best path final+6,678 bbIn these 50 paths
Worst path final−2,593 bbIn these 50 paths

Exact for this model · each hand is normal, so 50,000 hands are normal with a swing of 2,236 bb

Sampled · 50 paths · seed 20261005 · the downswing and the best and worst paths are this sample's

Why

Over 50,000 hands your win rate is worth +1,500 bb on average, but luck moves the total by about 2,236 bb either way (one standard deviation). Play four times as many hands and the win rate counts four times over while the swing only doubles, so the longer you play, the more often you finish ahead: 75 in 100 here.

That swing is variance, and a stretch of it going the wrong way is a .

How to read this

How to read this: Each thin line is one possible future given your stats. The bright green line is the luckiest path; the bright red is the unluckiest. The dashed line is your expected result.

If your chance of finishing ahead is below 80% you're going to feel variance hard. If your worst path looks terrifying, that's normal: it's the 50-out-of-50 bad-luck sample. Real downswings tracking-wise tend to fall between the 5th percentile line and the worst path.

We ran this exact per-hand model for 70 billion hands: 81% of true 3bb/100 winners hit a 20+ buy-in downswing within 100k hands (see the full downswing odds study). If a run like that has you wondering whether the site is dealing fairly, the arithmetic is in is online poker rigged? the actual numbers.

Exact figures and sampled ones

"Exact" figures come straight from the model: each hand is normal with your win rate and standard deviation, so the result after 50,000 hands is normal too, with a standard deviation of 2,236 bb. They do not change when you draw another sample. The other three are read off the paths drawn above.

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