Poker Variance Simulator
Last updated: 2026-07-14
Poker downswing and variance simulator. Project expected profit, confidence intervals, worst downswings, and risk of ruin from your win rate, standard deviation, and bankroll.
What does a poker variance simulator show you?
A poker variance simulator projects the range of outcomes your win rate and standard deviation produce over a sample of hands. It reports expected profit, a confidence interval, the depth of typical and severe downswings, and the risk that your bankroll goes broke. The point is to separate normal bad luck from an actual problem in your game or your bankroll size.
How do you read the results?
The five headline figures are exact, closed-form calculations that update as you type. Expected profit is your win rate times the number of 100-hand blocks. The confidence interval widens with the square root of your sample. Risk of ruin and chance of loss come from the normal distribution of results. The Monte Carlo layer then plots thousands of individual trajectories so you can see the spread, not just the average.
| Metric | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Expected profit | Your long-run result over the sample |
| 95% confidence | The band 19 of 20 runs land inside |
| Typical downswing | The median worst drop you should expect |
| Deep downswing | A 1-in-20 severe drop to prepare for |
| Risk of ruin | Chance your bankroll ever hits zero |
How much variance is normal for a winning player?
Far more than intuition suggests. A 5 bb/100 winner with a 100 bb/100 standard deviation can lose over tens of thousands of hands and still be a strong player. Standard deviation dominates results over any realistic sample; your edge only reliably shows up across hundreds of thousands of hands. The simulator makes that concrete by showing how often a genuine winner still finishes a stretch in the red.
How do you use variance to set a bankroll?
Your bankroll has to outlast the downswings your win rate guarantees. Enter your real numbers, read the deep-downswing figure, and keep a bankroll comfortably larger than it so a bad run does not end your play. Lower-variance formats need fewer buy-ins; high-variance games need many more. For a bet-by-bet view of the same trade-off, use our bankroll simulator and the Kelly criterion calculator. To reduce the variance itself, study spots with the hand equity calculator and manage tournament risk with the ICM calculator. The same discipline drives our live prediction market dashboard.
Key Takeaways
- Variance is the swing around your win rate — even strong winners endure long, deep downswings.
- Standard deviation dominates results over any realistic sample; edge only shows up across huge volumes.
- Risk of ruin falls with a higher win rate or bigger bankroll and rises with higher variance.
- Size your bankroll to outlast the deep-downswing figure, not the median one.
- This is an off-table planning tool, grounded in the same math professional players use to survive swings.