The Psychology of Live vs. Online

I don't know what it is, but when I play live I am much more aware of my stack because I have the chips in front of me. I think this causes me to be a more conservative.

On the other hand, when I am playing online, it doesn't feel as "REAL" I think. My chipstack is just a number on my screen. I think this causes me to be more aggressive.

If anyone has ever considered the thoght process of how they play based on the psychology of how "real" the game is to them, please give me your thoughts!

I feel like I'm actually a lot more conscious of my stack size online, because no matter what I'm doing there's always a number right there under my name telling me exactly how much money I have. Same goes for other players stacks and pot sizes, and I'm always unconsciously comparing that to the size of pots, the blinds and other players' stacks to the size of my stack.

Live, there's no convenient readout of the pot size and I occasionally find myself making mistakes that I wouldn't online.

About a month back, for example, I was playing a game where the blinds had just gone up to 3000-6000 and I had a stack just short of 40K. I open raised with pocket nines, tossed in a couple of 10K chips... and then immediately afterwards realised that I should've just open-shoved. Too late to make a difference, but it's just not a mistake I would've made online

That's why they use chips to gamble with. Instead of betting your groceries or your house payment, you're just using a chip. I do much better live than online because I've got the stack in my hands.