Live Play: At The Mercy of Emotion

So, it's 7am and I'm just now getting up, that's like the crack of noon for me. I'm usually up at around 5am on Sundays to play my online tournamants but I didn't get in from my Mohegan Sun session 'til after midnight. My god, I'm turning into one of those play all night, sleep all day live poker degenerates!

This week things unfolded a bit differently from last week but the end results were about the same. I finished up $490 in 4 hours of play. Whereas last week was for the most part a steady uptick, last night was more of a rollercoaster ride.

There were several interesting hands but the one I want to talk about now was a losing hand that came early in the night and I think it's a good example of typical live player mentality. There were 4 or 5 limpers (as usual) and I just completed in the SB for $1 with Th8h, the BB checked his option. When the board came all lowish hearts I checked hoping someone would get frisky with an overpair or a draw and as it turned out, the guy in position did take a stab at it. I think he bet about $10 into a $12 pot. I raised to about $40 thinking this would probably be then end of it but the BB called and everyone else including the opener went away. Not exactly what I had expected, but OK. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm good as I would expect any other made flush to reraise. My best guess is that the BB is drawing to a better flush.

There's about $100 in the pot and I don't think I have more than $60 behind. The turn is a blank and the only bet that makes sense to me is a shove. I can't think of a hand that would call a reraise on the flop and fold to a 1/2 pot bet on the turn, so that's what I did. Surprisingly he showed Kh3h, he was ahead the whole time. He said he never raised because he was "afraid I had flopped the nut flush" despite having no reason beyond his own fear to support that conclusion. And as far as I can tell, that is how live poker goes. Most live players just don't have the experience to properly determine the odds of a likely hand or outcome. They just remember one bad experience and forever their play is tainted by the memory of it. I hear it time an time again. "I've been beaten by the nuts too many times" or " I just called with behind 4 limpers with AA because my Aces NEVER hold up." (I actually saw this AGAIN last night and this from a player who claimed to be a pro. In this case the "pro" was rewarded when one of the other 6 players in the hand shoved all in on the flop with something like top pair. AA called and held. Odd to think that raising preflop with AA is worse than calling allin post flop but that's getting away from the point.)

The point is, to an online player, the game is all about odds (implied or direct) and reads based on experience, or phycology (3 or 4 betting light). Even if you don't know the exact math or odds they still have a feel for what's right and wrong based on the experience of playing hundreds of thousands of hands which can be substantiated at any time by reviewing their vast database of hand histories.

To a live player, even some winners, the game is all about emotions like and fear or hope. It's about that one BAD BEAT, or that time they limp called 15 BB's with T6s and won a huge pot. At 25 hands an hour the average recreational live player sees maybe 100 hands a night, a few thousand unreviewable hands in the course of a year. How can they possibly react on any basis other than visceral, irrational emotions. That's all they have to go on.

This contrast between the mentality of live and online play may result in dramatic differences in conventional poker wisdom as applied to such things as variance, bankroll management and expected returns of which I am only at the very begging stages of working out. Thanks to the shutdown I have nothing but time to do so.

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them and to dominate them."- Oscar Wilde

Massive contrast. I play live tournies and the play is so terrible. The players who play online are so obvious and the regs who play live are obvious too. The online players bluff a lot more 3-bet lighter and are generally harder to play against. The regs obviously have never read a poker book in their life but still thing their the nuts at poker. It feels good being a pretty average player online but smashing it when I play live. Also if you ask people to show their hand they will most the time.
If you tank for a bit, make it look like a hard laydown, then ask for them to show, they usually do.