Online to Live

Im Playing in a WPT Qualifier soon and I'd say 97% of my experience is from Online. Last time I struggles with my chips (showing my live inexperience). One time putting in a larger bet than intended, other times not raising correctly because not sure what size of pot is. Does anyone have suggestions for this Live Tournament Transition? Thanks

The only real way is to practice and get experience. Try playing a few small games or cheap home games to get prepared.

For the pot:

ALWAYS pay attention to all the action, and keep the pot size in your head, at least rounded off. It's something you have to practice because the online sites do it for you. If there's a lot of action and/or you lose count of the pot, I think you can ask the dealer for a chip count of the pot size. In terms of just the amount of your bet/raise, make sure you verbally say what you want to do, THEN put the chips in the pot. If you make a mistake then you're allowed to change it to what you said, but if you just throw chips in the pot and find out you put too many in (or too few), it's just too bad.

Have a look at this thread: transition from online to real life

And also this thread: Live tourney tips

The brief overview: protect your hand, don't string bet, don't act out of turn, verbalise and be nice to your dealer

Yeah I think the best advise anyone could possibly give you is to play as much live poker as possible. Try to get a home game SNG going, those are fun and easy to do (and cheap too if you want). Fortunately around here in SoCal we have many inexpensive tournaments ranging from $30 to $50 to play in, and some of the 'bigger' tournaments are still under $300 (we're talking WSOP circuit events).

So the short of it - there's no substitute for the real thing. You can read all the theory and tips you want, but you're still going to need some practical experience, especially if you want to compete at the WPT level. And I should know, I took 4th in a WPT event at the Mirage 2 years ago

icemonkey9
The Poker Blog