Variance...

[Kurn]

...for people who don't want to critically evaluate their own play during a downswing.

For a player to accurately attribute a downswing to variance, these things must be true.

1) He must have played a large number of hands at a specific level

2) He must have an established, stable win rate at that level. In other words, at 5/10 limit, over 200,000 hands, 3 BB/100 over the full 200,000 hands *and* over the 4 blocks of 50,000 hands.

3) After recognizing this downswing, he must evaluate hand histories, PT numbers, whatever, to verify that nothing has significantly changed in how he plays hands.

If all 3 are correct, then he can accurately attribute the downswing to variance.

For most people in a downswing, the right thing to do is not to curse "variance", but to go back over their play and figure out what they've been doing wrong.

We're not machines, after all, we tend to make mistakes.