To achieve success in poker, understanding bankroll management, variance, and emotion is key. Lacking knowledge about any of these could be enough to keep any player from succeeding. In this article, my plan is to explain how bankroll management, variance, and emotion go hand-in-hand and can affect each other. Note that this article is intended for beginners, so keep that in mind when reading and commenting.

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Let’s start with a simple explanation of each.

Bankroll management is a system by which a player manages his available poker capital by deciding which limits to play to reduce the risk of going broke. The exact number of buy-ins can vary based upon a few factors, including game type and stakes.

Variance is the difference between a player’s short-term results and long-term expectation. For example, a winning player can make an optimal decision and still lose. A correct play in poker may be to get the money in as a 60% favorite, but that still means there is a 40% chance of losing. Even if a player gets his money in as a 90% favorite, they’ll still lose 10% of the time.

Emotion is a natural, instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. It’s also defined as any of the particular feelings that characterize such a state of mind as joy, anger, love, and hate. Everyone has emotion, but not everyone can control it.

For a poker player, the ability to control your emotions is very important. There are two sides of the brain: emotional and analytical. If we are experiencing emotion while making a decision, we are making our decision from the wrong side of our brain.

I think it’s obvious that an analytical decision would be best in poker. It’s important that poker players understand how to control their emotions and make decisions analytically. A simple tip to help switch from the emotional side to the analytical side is to count to ten. Numbers and counting require analytical thought and will help switch to the analytical side.

Now, I want to explain how these three things work together. Let’s start by thinking about a player going to play $1/$2 No Limit with two or three buy-ins. I am sure this is not all that uncommon, but two or three buy-ins is a far cry from the 20 to 40 buy-ins suggested for a cash game bankroll.

When playing on two to three buy-ins, every decision is magnified because every loss is much more painful. The time we get it all-in on the flop with top pair and a flush draw versus second pair and the villain spikes two pair on the river, it’s hard to keep our emotions in check and understand the variance we are experiencing.

If we are playing with plenty of buy-ins, a loss like this is a minimal setback and we could easily rebuy and get our money in good again. But, when we play short, every decision is magnified and the fear of going broke is always lingering close by. By playing without bankroll management, we increase the chances of making emotional decisions by not having the funds to fade the variance.

Let’s say we have plenty of buy-ins, but lack an understanding of variance and emotion. In my opinion, playing without adequate knowledge of variance and emotion is an easy way to make your bankroll disappear. Without an understanding of variance, it is very easy to play higher stakes than necessary. It is also way more likely that a player will become emotional when they get it in good and then get drawn out on.

Variance and emotion go hand-in-hand, as it takes an understanding of each to achieve success in poker. When trying to learn how to control emotion, the first thing to understand is variance. It takes an understanding that no matter how good a player gets it in, there is usually a chance they could still lose. Knowing this helps us control our emotions when it happens. It’s far easier to control our emotions when we understand variance and realize our goal is long-term. Remember, any one hand doesn’t matter.

This article was written by John cracker9ballReynolds, who hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you are interested in taking poker lessons or would like any information, contact him at variance101@gmail.com or visit Variance101.com.