An Example of Variance

Almost every day I spend some time on the twoplustwo.com poker forums.  I check the various topics to see what I can learn and I also answer questions in the Beginners Forum.

It is easy to get very comprehensive information.  With this particular post, I answered the player pretty directly and gave an example from my own experience.  Other posters took different tracks.  One player talked about whether OP (original poster) would have a large enough sample size to estimate what kind of variance he could expect.  Another explained that which poker game or variant that he played, for example, cash games vs. tournaments. would have a big effect on his expected variance.

Here is that player's question followed by my response:

Q:

Of course it's impossible to answer the question "how much will my income be?" but what is maybe even more important to me is how reliable can a poker side income be?
After some years of study and playing solid, stopping when on tilt and going for the long run playing stakes which are comfortable to play. 
Of course it's never good to be dependant on the income, but how steady is it? Is it common to have frequently a month with significant loss? I have no clue, but I'm asking you guys with decades of experience ;D

A: 

To give you an idea of variance, I'll tell you about a bankroll building project that I started, on Juicy Stakes Poker, on 1/1/2017. I had $40 that had been sitting there for two years and I didn't want to deposit to add to that. My goal was to grind it up to $500 by the end of the year. I wanted to do this with strict bankroll management, having 100-buy-ins at whatever level I was playing. I don't multitable, so I starting grinding away, playing online $1 MTTs (SNGs almost never run on that site) and I played only $1 MTTs until I was over $200. At the end of the year I had $480. It was a great experience. I had played mostly live. I understood the math of what "long-term" means in poker, but experiencing it is different. I had three losing months. It was not fun losing more than $50 in a month--that was more than 10% of my goal down the drain. 450 tournaments was enough to get an idea of what variance is like and how bad downswings can be. The other great thing about it was that I could work on my game and see the results in real time. When I was working on something new, or trying to get better at something (continuation betting was a weak area that I worked pretty hard) 50 tournaments concentrating on one thing gave me a pretty good idea when something was working and when it wasn't. I could never get that kind of feedback playing 10-20 live MTTs a year. Finally, it was a great exercise in discipline and determination. It was my job to play every single day, 7 days a week. I missed a few days during the year, but it was less than 10. When I was in the middle of a big downswing I stuck with it and played the next day whether I was up $80 for the month or down $50 for the week. When I had a great week or month I didn't take it for granted because I knew that the next downswing would be coming soon. I'm sure that someone on here who plays 10 tournaments at a time could tell you some horror stories of losing thousands in a downswing, but I hope that my experience gives you at least some idea of what you can expect. As always, your comments and questions are welcome (see box below.)