Here it is. My shots against online poker.

I'd like to start this thread with the generals. First..I don't want anyone to think that I'm persuading people not to play online poker. If you enjoy it, good, I wish you the best of luck. The following are my problems and reasoning for not playing myself.


1. The "foreign" effect.

No. Not the amount of foreigners that play. I just wasn't sure what to call this. Online poker does not feel real. It feels like I'm playing a computer game with nothing on the line. I am too distant from cash, and money, and players and chips. It takes something away from it for me.

2. The solidarity of it.

I don't want to say its boring, but I guess it kind of is. Sitting..alone....behind a computer screen......for hours....and hours....and hours. It kinda looses its fun factor after a while.

3. The quality of players.

I'm a realist. I like live games because the players are so much worse. I can play 2/5 and make decent money. There are far fewer fish online than there in live play. United States legal policy and the economy have really influenced online play. I used to play online a lot about 3 or 4 years ago. I still sign on every once in a while when I have an hour to kill. The quality of play has gotten so much better. And the amount of people that are not playing seriously has dropped. Its a much harder game to beat and playing for dimes and quarters to build a bankroll is just not worth it to me.

4. All the extra edges people have.

This is a big one for me and maybe deserves its own topic. I really don't think that using pokertracker or any of these 3rd pary programs should be allowed. I think it gives players that use them a huge unfair advantage that go unmatched to the players that don't use them. The fact that you can buy player hand histories from certain sites and use them in your games is not right. You have never played with a certain person, yet you are able to see their last 10,000 hands. Its too much computer, and too little person.

Multi accounting goes in this same catagory. Its just not fair that players can share accounts or use more than one account. And its too hard to keep track of and monitor.

Bots..I mean come on. I used Bots in D2LOD. The fact that you can use a Bot to play poker is 1) kind of sad for the people it is continuously beating. 2) kind of sad that these sites allow it. 3) Makes you wonder about what kind of computer programs people can use to manipulate these sites.

Cheating is also in this. There have been numerous cheaters found, and scandles rumored. Its too hard to beleive that everyone is playing on the same field when every where you look there are people doing everything they can to get an edge.

There are just too many x factors that people use online. The protection of the internet is a problem for online poker.


I understand that online poker is a different game completely than live poker. I'm simply stating my reasons for not playing it, and wondering what others think.

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yea well online poker is different from live poker. Looks like you'd prefer playing live and online isn't your style.

Alright first off I'm going to comment on my opinion. It's not meant to be a rebuttal and I think you make some good points, however I'm going to state my opinion on why I personally enjoy online more:

Maybe it's just me and the fact that I've grown up where money is mostly electronic. I haven't paid cash in quite a while. I go pay with a credit card, the end of the month the CC company bills me and I send them a bill payment on the internet. I never touch cash yet I've touched the results of the cash many times. I request a payout from the online poker site, they send me a check, I deposit in bank, I buy something online, it's sent directly to my house, I now have said good. When I hear my CC has been stolen or has a fraudulent charge, I connect that with my real money has been stolen or attempted to be stolen right away. So to me money is online, it's not about the paper, the chips, or anything, it's about the value. As long as there is a direct process for me to get something I want with the money I think of it as real money, thus personally I feel there is as much on the line online. The shuffling of the chips live only can go so far when I get bored from only 1-tabling and playing 30 hands/hour.

Sort of alluded to this in part 1, but personally I find live poker infinitely more boring. Online I can be playing 24 tables at once. I can play for only half hour at a time if I get a window. If I want to think about a poker concept I can just bring up the hand in HEM and use a countless amount of tools to analyze it. And if that isn't satisfactory, I can post it here and get other opinions on the hand. And then there's the fact that I've made a ton of people I would call friends from playing online poker. I haven't played a ton of live poker but I have yet to talk to anyone I've ever met playing live poker after I left the casino. I talk to some people I've met playing online poker several times a week.


Yep, but I am currently making very decent money playing online poker. I can play a ton of tables at 1/2 or 2/4 and actually make a decent return while if I played even 5/10 full time live I'd have a hard time making a decent living, plus the swings would be much much worse. And it's worse for me being under 21, so my options are limited. The one casino I went to most recently, Turning Stone, doesn't even typically run a game as high as 5/10, so the highest I can play live on a regular basis is probably 5/5. And then it's a 6 hour ride each way, rake is higher, have to tip the dealer, have to pay for the hotel stay, higher priced food, etc.

I heard this quote and it rings true for me: "the day I can clone myself and play 24 tables live is the day I quit online poker". Despite having a massive edge at 5/10 and only having a slight edge at 1/2 online, the lack of rake/tips/other fees and the fact that I'm literally playing like 40 times the amount of hands in the same amount of time makes not only online poker more profitable, but also less swingy because the long run is slightly shorter.

My motto is, if there's an extra edge someone is taking, I'll do my best to be better than them at taking that edge. That said, buying hands and datamining is illegal and I have never done this. I know some people do it but I like to think the majority of the poker population is honest and that most regs are not buying these hands.


Not denying that this goes on, but it is illegeal and if caught players will have funds confiscated which are typically distributed among those cheated.


The sites do not allow it, and in fact FTP went as far as to ban people who were not bots (or at least were very good at hiding the fact that they were bots and made sure their bots intentionally made some misclick errors that cost them money).


I'm sure there is some cheating going on, but I do think the sites do a very good job at policing it, and again this comes down to my edge. If I have a much higher hourly playing online poker, even if others cheating takes away partly from that edge, as long as my edge is still bigger, I'll play online even though there is a higher risk of being cheated.

Also that said, there have been numerous cheaters found in live poker rooms as well, in fact it is widely believed there is more collusion in live games than in online games, because unlike online, live casinos can not check for collusion based on mucked cards, automatic algorithms, etc.


Fair points, hopefully you will understand where I'm coming from in enjoying online poker over live poker.

Dang zachvac, you should be writing books on poker with the handle you have on the game. That was a great read and made more sense than any other rebuttal or non-rebuttal I have ever read.

What Zach said. +1

And especially this:

Using HEM, PT, or similar to analyse your own play and to help you remember opponents against whom you have played is not unfair. Basically, it`s like having a big notebook in which you make lots of notes. You could do the same thing manually with a pencil. The tracker programme just makes it less tedious.

Buying additional info to which you have no right is not fair. Don`t do that.

The answer for me is simple, I like and enjoy playing poker, and there are no Casinos in my Province. I have played live when travelling and it is far more "boring" than anytime I have played online. Last time I played live the dealer had to chastize a player twice for holding up the game while he was sending text messages. The only part about poker tool software that I consider unfair, is those that show folded and mucked cards.

I know PT3 shows the mucked cards from a showdown, but not folded hands pre-sd. Are there other programs that show folded hands? I like being able to see the crap I was up against, and know that if I get caught in a bluff, next time I have a monster they might not believe me and keep calling.

edit: besides, on PS the hand history shows mucked cards from SD anyways. So that isn't even a 3rd party poker program, but the site itself.

The key thing i read in post and some of the replies was that online and live poker are completely different. DUH? Online has it's problems...and also it's merits. I like online because i can play nekkid in bed, not just that but can play whenever i want. As far as the quality of online player improving, and there being more fish live than online...i wholeheartedly disagree. There are plenty of fish online. and more everyday. online is full of players of weak composition who play online to hide this. That weak compostion is easier to read in a live player who can't hide behind his screen. This is in no way a bust on players on here but on the tens of thousands online who are truely fish who would crap themselves in a live environment. I love poker, period. online or live. no doubt that both white lytning makes good points but comes off as a player who has taken one too many buttwhoopins online!!! just my opinion. my opinion and a quarter may buy you a cup of coffee at a homeless shelter.

First, nice reply zac.

Second. Cheating? You just admitted that you cheat. Cheating doesn't go on in live poker? Come on! Get serious. Getting an edge? You mean a baseball pitcher should not look at the stats of a batter he never faced? Pro poker players keep notes on there oppenents just like using PT3 or Hem. Same thing.

if you don't want to play online poker, cool, some like it some don't. what i'm not understanding is why your posting about it. we are all on this forum because we like/love playing online. stop trying to recruit people people for your strange antipoker playing cult, lol.

Because it's an open forum where we should be able to discuss these things without flaming?

Players that use PT3 and similar do have an advantage over those who don't. But that advantage is definetly not unfair. The reasons being that every online player who wishes to use the program can, they are not limited to select people. These programs do not actually advise a player how to play, they are basically study/analystic tools to help the player improve his/her own game.

Yes there are programs out there that give some players an unfair advantage over others, but programs such as PokerTracker, PokerAce, PokerOffice, Hold'emManager are not in this catagory.