The first moment of a random process, also known as it's mean or average value, and often given the symbol &micron;. In gambling, the Expected Value can be computed for a game itself (example: JOB video poker has an Expected Value of 99.54% when played with a Max-EV strategy) or a particular instance (example: in PKM video poker, the dealt hand with the highest Expected Value is trips) or the entire playing situation (by including the value of cash back and comps, if any). For video poker, Expected Value is usually expressed in percentage units, whereas a game that is exactly break even has an Expected Value of 100%, and a positive game has an Expected Value of greater than 100%. However, other units may be used, including fractional units, or real currency. Expected Value is generally used interchangeably with Expected Return, Return, and sometimes Expectation and long-term return.

A measure of the variability of a data set or random process. The variance describes how far values lie from the mean (the first moment of the distribution), and is used, along with the mean, and higher moments, to characterize a probability distribution. The Variance is defined as the expectation of (X-µ)^2 where X is value and µ is the expected value or mean. While the combination of the variance and the mean fully describe a normal distribution (gaussian) they are not sufficient to describe the strongly non-normal distribution for video poker. Nonetheless, variance is an important factor to consider and understand in many aspects of video poker. For video poker, typical values of the Variance range roughly from 15 (PKM) to 100 (DBDJ) and is in units of the bet squared.
See also: Standard Deviation, Expectation, Expected Value, PKM, DBDJ.