Onlive vs. Live

Happy New Year everyone!

I just got back from Vegas where I went with my husband to see fireworks.


Of course, we both knew that we are going to play poker. I want to become a professional poker player because right now I am showing decent results playing at Full Tilt. I am up to 600$ right now playing SNGs and tourneys with 2-5$ buy-in.

Not bad for a girl who's been playing for two months and didn't know the order of hands in November.

So this is what happened in Vegas:


First night we tried to play 1-3$ limit at Mirage and actually made some dough playing against very poor competition.

I play by the book (I have read a dozen poker strategy books in the past two months) but my husband plays by the seat of his pants. He did everything wrong that night: Playing 7/2 and 3/5 unsuited, but he had an angel on his shoulder. He started with bad cards and then followed with good cards and he won.


It made me mad.

Next day I had a poker hangover, so I decided to play a tourney at Rio. Why Rio? I don't know. The time was right and the entry fees seemed fine. Also, the Rio is what I see on TV all the time. And my husband had $6 in Rio chips left over from the last time he was in Las Vegas, so we went there.

So I paid 45$+5$ to enter the tournament and used add-on (20$ for 2000) during the first break. So it was my first live tournament. I did well, but I also did badly and it was pretty traumatic. We left Las Vegas right after. When I was thinking about it today - after a good night's sleep with a few PTS (poker traumatic stress) nightmares, I came up with a list of reasons why I should not have played this tournament:

1) Players. 30 players only. So it was closer to big SNG than to a tourney. Although I am used to SNGs, but


2) Pay structure: 3 places paid out of 30. IF it had been four places, I would have made money. Yes, in my first live tourney I finished fourth out of 30 which was good, but it was bad because third place was $300 and fourth was, as we say: NADA!!!!

3) Turbo. It was a turbo tourney. Although it was not called so. But the blinds were growing every 5 min I think. Or maybe 10. I am sorry. I am not sure. But to give the idea" The Big blind would go around the table one circle and the blinds would grow. It was really fast compared to online tourneys I am used to.

I played a good game and got to the final table. I finished 4 out of 30 right before the money and I was very pissed at myself. Although I was the shortest stack and the blinds were just killing! Literally. 3000/6000. 1000 antes. I had a very hard time accepting this defeat, but now I feel a little bit better.

So now I finally get to the thread point: I feel very disappointed about the live tournament I played. First, I know it sounds funny, but it is so much easier to manage your money online than live. LOL. This is of course because of the lack of experience. As I mentioned, the blinds were going so fast, so you don't have time to think. And when you think too long, you get crippled because the people around are crippled by growing blinds. Also when you talk about tilt!!! It is right there. I don't know, maybe it is me being a girl, but I can't stand when other players are talking around you discussing how to "kill you" because you are the girl and you don't belong at that table. The dealer was trying to discipline them, but they were still doing it.

So when there were 4/30 left somebody suggested that three winners pay buy-in to the 4th. That guy had a shorter stuck than me and he was just covering his ass. So everybody said: yes, we are gonna do it. I was one of them. The guy was able to double up a little, which made me a smallest stack. With the blinds huge like this it became just gambling and no poker. So I lost. I went all in with 7/8 unsuited but I was not lucky like my husband.

I didn't get lucky on the coinflip. Those f@#$@$@#$ said that they are not gonna give me my 50 bucks, explaing it that they were uncertain that they were supposed to do it. Boloney. Anyway I was so frustrated and said that I didn't even want to argue with them about it. I could have asked the previous dealer to back up my words, but I just want to restroom and cried. I wanted to keep face.

My question is: how is your experience different when you play live/online? Which one do you prefer? Do you have any bad stories, so I won't feel like I am the only one who got bad experience. What do you think about what happened to me? It is right, that men are femmefobique? (afraid of women)

I have played live alot...the biggest difference is the amount of hands your able to see online as compared to live.The blinds probably werent increasing fast,it was probably because it takes much longer to play a hand live than it does online so you were just seeing fewer hands than your used to.I enjoy live games but you will find alot of players seem looser and will call you down with marginal hands IMO.

To answer your last question, "are men afraid of women?" I would say in a way yes, for me atleast it's alot harder to play live vs. a woman than a dude, women are intimidating at a poker table and they make it harder to focus on your cards

The biggest difference is without a doubt the tells...

...when playing online you can gather information strictly by betting patterns, response time and potential chat-comments.

...when playing live you give away so much more, there is almost no way to even count the number of tells you might give away or pick up at a live table, it can be anything from humming, trembling or even how you stack your chips or how you bet them.

One of my biggest problems live is that nobody ever seems to belive me, if I bluff I get called, but then again if I have strong hands I also get called quite often.

Only played a live tournament once, LOL, 5 dollar buy in at my HS. Couple years ago, I didnt know how to play but made it to final table but still lost. I was proud though, my first tournament and I didnt even know what good hands were. I lost with two pair to a flush, I didnt take into consideration the three suits and my heart was pounding. Id say a live tournament would seem easier, but the emotions are more involved and it can make it harder to concentrate.

If you made 4th of 30, id say you should keep playing live tournaments, especially being a woman, because it throws guys off, whether they think your good or not. No doubt if you were another guy, and threw a fit about the buy in, they wouldve paid you, but since you were a girl and outplayed most of em, they probably didnt like you very much, lol.

An edit, just to say nice job on the 4th, probably better than most others could do in live tournaments especially with only two months of experience.

Thank you so much. I will keep trying !

I prefer live play, both tournaments and cash games, both Limit and No Limit. For whatever reason, I do much better playing live and I also enjoy the social aspect of being at a table with other live players. Pokwer-wise, being able to see physical tells are the chief benefit of live play.

Unfortunately, that story is a fairly common one for low buy-in live tournaments.

Poor tournament structures are common: once you've paid your entry fee to the casino ($5, in this case) they've made all the money they're going to make off you until you leave the tournament. So they want it over as quickly as possible so you'll move back to the cash tables or the floor games or drinking or whatever else and start paying them money again. They encourage faster bust outs by having short blinds and fairly low starting stacks

It's unlikely the blinds were actually five minutes (that's two hands in a live game, if you're lucky), but even if they were 15 or 20 minutes the game will still play much like an online turbo. Sucks, but for the above reasons it's unlikely to change so you've either gotta adjust your game or stay away from those tournaments.

Getting shafted on the deal for fourth place was just nasty. Depending on whether or not the casino sanctions deals (I've got no idea if the Rio does or not, FWIW) there's probably not a lot you can do about it other than learn from it and remember the experience for next time. Sorry to hear it though, it really sucks.

To answer the broader question, I do most of my playing online for the convenience. I learned playing live though (and I deal live games), and I enjoy playing live just that little bit more.

You do have to be very selective about what live games are worth turning up to: while there are some exceptions, most live tournaments with low buy ins will be engineered to be over in three or four hours max and will have horrible structures.

Often you'll be better off sticking to the cash game tables, where you'll have a lot more freedom to play your own game in your own time. Play there can be just as bad (if not worse) than in the tournaments too.