Variance
Variance is the spread of short term results around the long run average, which is why a run of winning or losing sessions says very little on its own about how well someone plays.
Poker pays out in lumps. Even a large edge shows up as a small difference per hand, and it takes a great many hands before that difference is louder than the noise around it. Until then the results are mostly the noise.
This cuts both ways, and the pleasant direction is the more dangerous one. A winning month proves no more than a losing one, so the only readings worth acting on come from the decisions themselves rather than from the graph.
an example
your cards
All the money goes in before the flop with two aces against 7c 2d. Counted across all 1,712,304 possible boards, the aces win 87.99% of the time and lose 11.61%. That is as close to a lock as poker offers, and it still loses roughly one time in eight.
This example is made up. The real one is in your own hand history: find variance in your own hands and see how often it came up and what it cost you.
related terms
Tilt
Tilt is playing worse than you know how to because of how you feel, usually after a loss, a bad beat or a long stretch w ...
Bankroll
Your bankroll is the money set aside for poker and nothing else, kept separate from the money you live on.
EV
Expected value, or EV, is the average result of a decision if you could repeat it many times: every outcome multiplied b ...
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Knowing the word is not the same as seeing it.
Forty hands against a bot, no account, and your own hand history at the end.