Understand the role luck plays in your results and make confident decisions backed by statistical analysis.
Get started free Free forever — 10 sessions includedPoker is a game where short-term results can be wildly misleading. Variance analysis measures how much your actual results deviate from your expected win rate, giving you a statistical framework to evaluate your performance. PokerCharts calculates your standard deviation across sessions and shows you the range of outcomes you should expect at your current skill level. Instead of guessing whether a downswing is bad luck or bad play, you get a clear, data-driven answer.
Our Monte Carlo poker simulator runs thousands of randomized projections based on your actual session data to model the full range of possible outcomes over any timeframe. You can see best-case, worst-case, and median profit paths for the next 100, 500, or 1,000 sessions. This helps you plan your bankroll with realistic expectations rather than optimistic assumptions. Each simulation uses your personal win rate and session variance, so the results reflect your game — not a theoretical average player.
PokerCharts displays your results alongside 70%, 95%, and 99% confidence intervals so you can instantly see whether your current trajectory falls within normal statistical bounds. The drawdown tracker monitors your largest peak-to-trough swings and compares them against expected drawdowns for your profile. When you know that a 40 buy-in downswing was within your expected range, you can stay focused on making good decisions instead of panicking.
The hardest challenge in poker is knowing whether your results reflect your true ability. Our variance tools break your performance into a skill component and a luck component, helping you identify when you are running above or below expectation. Over time, you can track how your true win rate converges as the sample size grows, and see exactly how many sessions you need before your results become statistically significant. This is the foundation of a data-driven approach to improving your game.
Variance is the average squared deviation of your session results from your expected win rate. In practice, you don't calculate it by hand — you log enough sessions (PokerCharts recommends at least 100) and the system computes both your standard deviation and your variance automatically. The standard deviation is more intuitive than raw variance because it's in the same units as your bankroll (dollars or BB).
Standard deviation measures how spread out your session results are around your average. In cash games it's typically expressed in big blinds per 100 hands (BB/100). A standard deviation of 80 BB/100 is normal for live $1/$2; online games run higher (90–100 BB/100) due to faster gameplay and tougher fields. PokerCharts shows your personal standard deviation alongside the typical range for your game type.
Cash game results need roughly 30,000–100,000 hands to reach statistical significance — meaning your observed win rate is reasonably close to your true win rate. Tournament results take much longer because variance is higher per session. Most live cash players don't reach 30,000 hands in a year, which is why short-term swings feel so dramatic. PokerCharts' Monte Carlo simulator shows you exactly how wide your confidence interval is at your current sample size.
A confidence interval is the range your true win rate likely falls within based on your sample. A 95% confidence interval at $20/hour means there's a 95% chance your true hourly is somewhere in that range. Wider intervals mean more uncertainty (small sample). As you log more sessions, the interval narrows. PokerCharts displays 70%, 95%, and 99% intervals so you can see how confident you should actually be in your results.
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