Hello, Been playing online now and have 12000 hands in poker tracker. All my stats are right where they should be except Won Money when went to showdown and I am in the very unlucky category on the luck bell curve. I have found myself losing showdowns way more often than not. ex. I 3bet from the BB with AK after getting raised from the button. Button calls . Flop comes Axx. I Bet , Button goes all in. I call (is that my first mistake) . I am ahead . Button has A10 . Gets the 10 on the river to bust me out. ex. I raise from the LJ with AK , CO calls , Flop comes A 4 8. I bet out and the CO calls. next comes K . I bet 3/4 pot, and CO calls. 6 comes on the river and I bet 3/4 pot. CO goes all in. I call and he turns over 5 7 for the straight. Having top pair top kicker and villian catching a card on the river to complete their set. So on and So on . Because of these types of run outs I have started buying in with the smallest stack size. Is 12000 hands enough to say I am getting screwed by the poker Gods. OR is this normal variance ? Should I not be going to the river unless I have something a lot more than top pair top kicker even though I am always ahead pre flop and flop. I do well in home games and casino playing 1/2 but getting hammered playing .10/.25 online. I read that online favors high action ? Thanks for the input and some guidance.
Short answer: it's normal variance.
Poker is a brutal game, you can play 200k hands perfectly and still lose. No sample size is big enough for runbad. Lifetime badrun exists. 
I can't say that poker is an overtly cruel game; it depends more on the knowledge and understanding of the game at the moment, how to navigate, what to do, and how much to bet. Some more professional players are better at this or less professional players if we're talking online of course and not on a computer. I prefer to play on platforms that are presented on CasinoCanada, and this does not happen every day. Sometimes I win and sometimes I do, I just play for fun and don’t worry about the money I might lose, it’s just a hobby.
I've learned when the villian goes all in after the river in 99 % of the cases the villian has made his hand, so fold is in order here, even with that monster hand.
Originally posted by sld11
Is 12000 hands enough to say I am getting screwed by the poker Gods. OR is this normal variance ?
Yes and yes. In terms of "getting screwed by poker gods" even one hand is enough to say so. You go all-in with AA vs. 23o, and you lose. Your EV (expected value) was highly profitable, but due to bad luck you lost the hand.
You can simulate poker variance with https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/ but be warned! Doing so might cause injury on your brain, when you realize how brutal variance can be. Here are some examples (I used Holdem standard deviation):
In this image you see 20 simulated runs for 12000 poker hands. The dark red is the worst run, which is losing 10 buyins. Light blue is the luckiest one, winning over 12 buyins. Both of them have the same EV (+2,5bb/100), meaning that for the simulation they are as good as the other in poker. Light blue was a lot luckier than the dark red. Each graph is one player, and beneath them all there is a black straight line that shows the EV. Meaning the winnings if there was no variance in poker.
Now the depressing part is to check the same stuff for bigger sample size.
This is for 10x more hands, 120K. For some players, that is a year or even two years. And we can see, that the cursed dark red player (the unluckiest one in the simulation) is losing over 75 buyins, although his expected value is +30 buyins profits. Winning player, just unlucky one. Meanwhile the light blue, who is as good player as the dark red, is winning about 130 buyins.
Ok, let's say you grind a lot. And I mean A LOT. Let's up the volume to 1 million hands!
Poor dark red is down 100 buyins, and that 1 million hands might be his lifetime hands. Meanwhile lught blue is rolling in money, winning way over 500 buyins. To put this in other words:
Your skill level might be a small winner, but due to variance you can end up winning twice as you should in your lifetime, or you can end up losing money for your whole life due to variance.
That is REALLY hard for human brains to understand and accept. But this is the reality. There are good players, who have been running under EV or just lost for years. And the are bad players who have constantly won. Is it fair? No. But thing in our universe don't function on fairness. It's cold mathematics.
There are things you can do. One is increasing your skills, to increase the expected winrate. If we get it to 10bb/100, here is that 1 million hand simulation:
Now even the dark red is making 7bb/100 profits and is happy. By running more simulations, you can find one where dark red runs really bad and wins "just" 5bb/100.
Important note: either player can run over or under EV in tracker/pokercraft graphs. Variance is more than just how well you run in all-in situations. It's also what cards you get in different situations. Like in the example, where here had solid hand and opponent made straight on the river. Bad variance, but not shown on tracker EV graphs. It's important to understand what that graph means.
To the other question, online poker itself doesn't favor loose-aggressive strategy as default. If it would, then most pro's would be loose-aggressive. Poker is a strategy game, where one player puts his strategy against opponents strategies. Even in single hand, the odds for better strategy to win is are better before the cards are dealt. Once the cards are dealt, things might change. And even when the odds are better, as long as there are cards yet to come those odds might change. The longer the run (= hands), the higher the odds are that player wins as much as his skills dictate his winrate to be. But the odds are never 100%. Hard part is also that we never know for sure what our expected winrate is. And actually that number is constantly changing, it's not a permanent number.
All we can do is to play as good strategy as we can, embrace the variance and see the results.
Great post by Kyyberi! Thank you! (first image says 1200 hands, not 12000 (but doesn't really matter)).
Variance in online poker can be wild, especially with 12,000 hands. Adjusting stack sizes or tightening post-flop could help with tough showdowns. Keep analyzing and adapting.
Doing so might cause injury on your brain, when you realize how brutal variance can be.
Truer words have never been spoken, in a poker context.
Hey, 12,000 hands is a decent start, but variance can be brutal. Those river beats are tough, but not uncommon. Online can be more aggressive, so maybe tighten up your play a bit.