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The use of a sound blackjack strategy is going to greatly improve your chances, but still, it will not help you know what is going to happen next. That is why it is said that variance is the reason two players can make identical decisions, bet in a similar way, yet in the end be quite content or totally displeased.
Getting the variance makes your focus solely on the blackjack decisions and the probabilities that you have made in the long-run instead of the outcome of one single winning or losing session.
What Does Variance Mean in Blackjack?
The variance, in a statistical sense, tells us how wide the actual results differ from their expected outcome. In other words, it justifies the existence of ups and downs in results if it is the case that you, as a player, continuously make mathematically correct decisions.
The truth is, the losing streak of the first player has nothing to do with his strategy being ineffective, while the other player’s winning streak can be purely explained as good fortune.
Expected Value Is Not necessarily Equal to Outcome
Expected value, or EV, gives the average outcome you can expect if you play an extremely large number of hands. But it does not necessarily give you the result of the next few hands at the gaming table.
Basic strategy is aimed at selecting the mathematically best decision for every hand through player cards, dealer’s upcard, and game rules. This strategy can reduce the house edge but cannot eliminate the element of randomness or guarantee a profit.
Short Sessions May Be Illusionary
One might end a 100-hand session in profit due to getting several blackjacks, or good results of doubles, or having the dealer outcomes in their favor. But a player who is making equally the best decisions might still be losing.
This is when the notion of variance becomes crucial. Since the smaller sample size yields fewer results, it can allow rare events to heavily skew the outcome one way or the other. A larger number of trials, though, would usually give rise to a mathematical expectation over time, but even a big sample can still result in big variations.
Strategy Should Be Judged on Decisions Rather than Wins
If you play blackjack, you shouldn’t determine whether a strategy works based on yesterday’s win or loss. What matters is whether you made the right decision for your particular cards and table rules.
For instance, if you change your decision to hit to stand just because you lost several times in a row, it’ll negatively impact your future decisions. However, if you win a hand after making an inferior decision mathematically, it doesn’t mean that move was right.
Wrapping Up
Variance is probably one of the most important factors in understanding why you get certain results from a game of twenty-one. Variance shows that good decisions are still liable to cost you money soon, and that you might get some fortunate results even without any sure way of getting them. Pay attention to the soundness of your decisions, study the rules thoroughly, and use a sufficiently large sample when evaluating a strategy’s performance; most importantly, keep within a predetermined entertainment budget and realize that chance, not confidence, determines the outcome of individual bets.
