Any game that has a modicum of reliance upon luck is accompanied by variance. In all games where there is both an element of luck and skill, the goal is to master the skill portion of the game as completely as possible as this will help reduce the amount of luck that goes into it as well. To illustrate this point, let’s look at an example at Bodog.com.
If you have a fair coin, the probability of landing heads versus tails is 1:1. Suppose you have to pay $1 to a friend every time it lands heads, and he pays you $1 every time it lands tails. Over an infinite number of samples, the ratio will remain 1:1. However, in the short term, this is not the case. It is not uncommon for you to be on the losing end of things 4 or 5 times in a row.
Poker is not a coin flip; there are many more variables that go into a round of poker. In Texas Hold ‘Em, you are dealt 2 cards, but you do not know the order of the 50 remaining cards. By calculating what the odds of a particular card coming up, you can help to eliminate the inherent variance by adjusting your play appropriately. For example, you are dealt and ace and a king of hearts. You have 2 of the 13 hearts in your hand, leaving 11 hearts in the deck. If the flop gives you two more hearts and a spade, you now know that there are 9 hearts remaining of the 47 cards left to be seen. In other words, your odds of hitting a heart on the turn are 9:47, or about 1:5.2. By adjusting your bets to account for the true odds of a hand’s outcome, you are adjusting your strategy in order to minimize the variance that a shuffled deck creates.