Why do I win so much live and not online?

#1 24-02-2008, 7:05 PM

Hi all,
First let me ask what the hell is roi?I win alot playin with the guys but Ive made so many deposits with Poker stars and never cashed!!!!

I am a good player ,I know it.. however I hardly ever cash in trnys and this girl Mon aat the last freeroll gave me such a hard time cause I raised preflop
with A9 suited ,needless to say I won the hand and carried on to place 54th and win 50 cent .I then took the money from the cardschat freerolll at pokerstars and have since turned it into 5 bucks ..does that mean my game is gettin better?Most of all why am I losing so much online?Also the girl Mona said I had a (roi?)of negative 80 % what was she talkin about?

#2 24-02-2008, 7:11 PM

Hi man

I play live poker with my friends too, almost always winning, theyre just not as good as I , but I think that in live poker you can better concentrate on other players, you can read tells , bluffs etc... do you listen to music or something when you play online ???

Vlad

#3 24-02-2008, 7:13 PM

How do you know you're a good player?

#4 24-02-2008, 7:13 PM

ROI = Return On Investment. It's a tournament term. If you pay a $3 tourney fee and win $6, that's a 200% ROI. If you don't win any money in a tourney, it's a 0% ROI. So add up all your winnings, add up all your fees, and take winnings (this is net) and divide by your fees.

2 reasons for the questino though:

1. Live is easier than online. You could be playing tougher competition online than live

2. You're playing way too high limits or buy-ins and the short-term variance is screwing you over. The rule is never play with more than 5% of your BR for a sng and even less (2%?) for MTTs.

One instance of winning says nothing about how good you are, it could mean you're getting better or it could mean you got lucky. Just keep reading around here, post some HHs if you have a sticky situation or question, and I guarantee you'll get better

#5 24-02-2008, 7:14 PM

ROI (Return on investment) means how much money you have invested and lost/won given the situation.

Serious players want a positive ROI.

You say you are losing money, but you are playing freerolls? If I have money on a site I dont touch freerolls, so im kinda confused. Freerolls are not a proper way to distinguish playing online poker. The play in freerolls is straight up retarded and alot of luck....

You say you dont cash often in tournaments, ill assume buy-in ones. Its totally possible to not place in the money in tournaments, over and over and over, up to 15+++ times.

#6 24-02-2008, 7:20 PM

how do you know you win live? do you keep records?

#7 24-02-2008, 7:20 PM

From Pokertips.org:

ROI is short for "return on investment." This is a poker term that is used to measure the profitability of one's play in poker tournaments. ROI is calculated as (100 * total profit/total buy-in). Thus, if one received a prize of $150 in a tournament with a buy-in of $100+$9, one's ROI is calculated as 100 * $41/$109= 37.61%. ROI is used for tournaments though because tournaments always have a fixed buy-in in relation to the prize pool. ROI is not useful for ring game play.

My opinion. If you have made several deposits, I would step back and re-evaluate your game strategies. Read a bit. Post some HH here and check the feedback (the regulars on this site are incredibly good). What Mona was doing was looking at your statistics in either Sharkscope or her copy of PokerTracker.

Does $.50 --> $5 mean you're getting better? Probably not. If you keep that $5 or grow it over the course of a month or two, you are probably getting better.

Good luck and good cards.
Welcome to CC.

#8 24-02-2008, 7:29 PM

Hi to all you ppl asking how i Know im a good player live,well I would say of 52 weeks out of the year me and my pals play poker maybe 40 weeks..
Well out of those weeks I would honestly say I have brought home winnings 60% of the time ...but the key is I have NEVER taken a huge loss live.....

#9 24-02-2008, 7:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nodelay69

I win way more live then online too I has to do with the donk factor...lol

Get ready for a brow beating.

#10 24-02-2008, 7:38 PM

The main reason I try online was to try to better my game because I think we need the donks to keep our game in check ,however they sure do cost you in any tourneys seems to me!Its a shame too that some one said freerolls are dumb well Im using these freerolls not to make money but to learn how these ppl play so when I do play a decent payout trny I will succeed!So thx to cardschat for the freerolls cause I need em bad....LOL

#11 24-02-2008, 7:57 PM

Hi

I personally feel, that the ability to feel the actual money makes a difference in play. If you are in a live game with real money ie: bills and coins you see what you are betting and what you have. With chip play it is not as daunting to lose as real money, so that can be a factor in live play.

The biggest problem I have noticed with online play is that the fact that you never really get the feel of the money in your hands. People seem more likely to play in a looser style online because it doesn't really feel real.

The better online players who have actually succeeded to turn good profits, are more likely to realize the actual benefits of playing hands for what they are worth and not chasing the possible big wins with mediocre hands. Confidence and patience is the key.

Just my 2 cents

#12 24-02-2008, 9:40 PM

From here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by aliengenius

First things first: more donks do not make you lose. It might increase your variance, but playing against poor player is not going to turn you from a winning player to a losing player.

Let's look at some reasons why you might win live, but not online:

1. You are not really a winning player live. Yes, it's very possible that you misremember the amount of your wins live, unless you are disciplined enough to keep a detailed log of your live play. Pretty basic human psychology to tend to forget your loses and remember your wins. You "forget" your trips to the ATM and all those tournament sessions where you didn't cash live. Online, you can't lie to yourself: your account balance is right there in black and white, and making another deposit often involves a bit of effort that isn't easily forgotten.

Also, your live game sample may not be big enough to determine if you are a winning player yet. Statements like "I usually cash in 2 out of 3 tournaments I play live" are clearly ridiculous. This is a short term run of good luck, as not even the best players in the world can make a claim like this. But if you have only played about ten tournaments it's not out of the question that a positive variance like this could occur.

2. Live players are actually worse than online players. This has been my experience at least: $1/$2 NL live plays like one cent/two cent online. As for tournaments, if you are not doing research and seeking out a good structure, most live tournaments are much more luck contingent do to small starting stacks and fast blind levels. Without a doubt there is a higher percentage of good players online that you are likely to encounter as opposed to playing live. Your local cardroom might have a few expert players, but it's likely that you don't cross paths that often due to shear numbers, or simply them playing at different stakes than you. Not so online: there are a lot more players who know what they are doing, and that you are likely to encounter, even at the lowest stakes.

3. Less "distraction" live. You are pretty much constantly reminded that you are playing poker, where as on the computer you have different distractions like e-mail, cardschat (!), etc. Live has it's own distractions, sure (Venetian cocktail waitresses anyone

?) but the point is that you are not going to lose your main focus of actually playing poker. There is a very clear line about "what you are doing" when you are at a cardroom: playing poker. Online, this isn't the case, as you can be multitasking to your detriment. While doing several things at once can help some people and prevent them from playing too loosely due to boredom, it can have a negative effect on others.

4. Lower stakes online. You might not take the game as seriously, or play to your "A" level if you are only playing a $5 tournament as opposed to buying in live for $120.

5. Extra removal from the actual money. It's been said that the guy who invented gambling was smart, but the guy who invented chips was a genius (or something similar to that effect). Betting is a lot easier for most people if you are putting in little pieces of round plastic as opposed to hundred dollar bills. It's similar to it being easier to overspend with a credit card as opposed to forking over cash. Online has an even further removal for the reality of it being money. This can be a positive aspect with regard to poker and making +EV decisions of course, but it can go the other way as well for some people.

6. Different skills are needed playing online. It's beyond the scope of this topic to innumerate them all here, but clearly ou have to give up things like physical "tells" skills (overrated anyway, imo), and have better statistical analysis ability when playing online. I think that most people will make a lot bigger deal of this than they should. Patter recognition (in opponents betting), both live and online, is going to give you more information more often about the strength of someones hand than seeing them twist their oreo a certain way.

7. Failure to make the strategic adjustments necessary. Your opponents play differently online than they do live. Again, it's probably beyond the scope of this topic to get into all the specific ways this occurs, suffice to say that you need adjust your game to compensate for this.

And finally:
8. You're not a winning player period. Play is much faster online, and you are able to see so many more hands or play so many more tournaments in a short period of time, that it becomes clear a lot more quickly if you are a winning player of not. Your mistakes are magnified since you will be making them far more often. In other words, playing online gets you into the long run faster, where a more accurate assessment of your skill can be seen. It takes a lot of different skill sets to win at poker, including patter recognition, logical/analytic mind, willingness to continue to study/learn/improve, discipline, etc., etc., etc., and a lot of people just are not going to have the ability or time to be winning players.

#13 25-02-2008, 1:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by -foldemstupid

Hi to all you ppl asking how i Know im a good player live,well I would say of 52 weeks out of the year me and my pals play poker maybe 40 weeks..
Well out of those weeks I would honestly say I have brought home winnings 60% of the time ...but the key is I have NEVER taken a huge loss live.....

So your live play is mostly just against friends? Even if your friends are all great players (and I'd have my doubts), I think this explains it.

If you're used to playing the same group of people all the time, you'll find the game much easier. You'll get used to the way each person plays and will, hopefully, work out ways to beat them over time. There's people I play regularly live whose actions I can almost always predict, but this isn't much use to me outside that specific game.

Poker is about being able to play against more than eight people though. Online, you'll be facing a number of issues that you won't be in your live games. You'll be playing against people you've never played before and have no reads on, you won't be able to see them or 'read' them as easily, and you'll typically have to think and act faster.

Also, while I hate to concede the point, AG is also right in pointing out that, for the stakes involved, online players are usually a better standard than the same stakes live players.

You'll need to move down a long way in stakes online compared to your live game. Live I might happily sit down at a $1-$2 or $2-$3 game, or play in a tournament with an entry fee up to a couple of hundred bucks. Online, I'd be mad to do that.

Have you ever played live in a casino, or even a bar league? That'll be an interesting test, seeing if you really do have a live-vs-online problem, or a your home game vs all other games problem.

I'd recommend reading a few poker books (AG has a convenient thread where he reviews pretty much every book known to man), maybe taking your live game to a casino to see how it holds up, and / or posting a few hands in the hand analysis section here to get some feedback.

Good luck

#14 25-02-2008, 2:44 AM

Playing *live* is alot like playing ring games online prolly.So,you say you n friends play and you win 60%,you didnt say what you were playing,stud poker,no limit holdem,or tournament poker,You didnt say what games you plat at pokerstars either.Tournament poker is an entirely diff game.I would recommend buying a book on winning at online tourneys,I didnt start winning money until I got more info on how to win tourneys.

#15 25-02-2008, 3:43 AM

I would like to add to aliengenius’s list of reasons why you might win live, but not online:

1. The live game is being played at a nice reasonable pace. You’re not being forced to play over a 100 hands an hour. And although a handful of people can successfully multi-table online (similar to being a professional black-jack card counter) trying to navigate seven hundred to over a thousand hands per hour with your “A” game, would be financial suicide for 90% of online players. You have much more time playing live to cool down after a bad hand or two. You’d be rushed through 4 hands online while steaming, as apposed to 1 playing live.

2. If you’re a poker player, not a gambler, and even if you only play live games at two maybe three times a week, you would have financial records of your live play, and also would be able to determine if you’re a winning player. Of course the data base when compared to online play would be a huge difference, but that doesn’t mean it has to be better. If you’re taking poker serious and unless you live close to a casino, you would know where all the local clubs are. I play live about 3 times a week and know and play in seven different clubs, picking and choosing the games and tournaments taking place. Only living a couple hours away from both Conn. and A. City, I get to visit them often, and play in most of the good tournaments taking place. Traveling with wife and friends for a weekend, always having a great time along with great food, shows, and usually great sex, regardless what happens at the tables is a much better way to enjoy poker.

3. I also agree with aleingenius that live players may be worse then online players. I would guess that it would only make sense that live play would be an easier place to make money.

4. Saying you’re winning 2 out of 3 tournaments live or online is probably not likely. But most tournaments I play live locally, never have less then twenty and usually never more then 50 entries. So winning 2 out of 3 tournaments would happen much more often live then online. Usually top 4 seats in one of these tournaments starting at 130.00 to 550.00 dollar buy-ins usually make’s for a nice nights work and really spikes the ROI. (along with always a free meal) Lower stakes online. You might not take the game as seriously, or play to your "A" level if you are only playing a $5 tournament as opposed to buying in live for $120. That’s usually what you could expect from most players online at these stakes, so why would you even bother playing this garbage? Are you just killing time and getting rid of five bucks, while praying to the poker gods?

5. Distractions while playing online are ridicules for most players. Depending on any person’s present life, to include wife, children, parents, phones, computer at finger tips with tons of distracting options, etc. etc., playing online could become a challenge long before you even start a game. If one of the biggest distractions playing live is constantly being forced to concentrate on your game, well I guess I really have nothing to say here. And occasionally looking up at a beautiful woman with eye popping jugs, the 1.00 dollar tip for a coke is not all bad.

6. I have played through a whole live tournament without picking up on one single tell. Yet, I can’t begin to tell you how many hands I won especially at crucial times that changed the entire outcome for me during a live tournament being right on a tell. Live tells become more obvious during middle and late play with the cash basically on the table. This option is totally missing from online. Discovery of betting patterns is crucial and key both for online and live play. But, thinking live tells is overrated, is a sign of a weak live player.

7. Many live pros do very well playing online also. But most of these players have the pockets to play with other fortunate online players with money to burn. Being able to play in $1,000.00 up to $5,000.00 dollar buy-in tournaments, or high stakes cash games on consistent basics is for a very elite group. Winning just one of those tourneys or having a good week at the cash tables could do wonders for your ROI. You see many pros at the cheap tables 5/10 etc. but I’m sure their sponsor wants them to mingle with the common people also.

#16 25-02-2008, 3:53 AM

If your ITM 60% of the time vs. live play you should go to the casino's NOW.

#17 25-02-2008, 3:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrentD22

If your ITM 60% of the time vs. live play you should go to the casino's NOW.

I agree with you, but who said that?

#18 25-02-2008, 3:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrentD22

If your ITM 60% of the time vs. live play you should go to the casino's NOW.

Maybe, but I wouldn't be expecting to maintain the same win rate. Casinos and weekly home games are very different beasts.

#19 25-02-2008, 4:00 AM

Added a 6th and 7th reason to above post.

#20 25-02-2008, 4:03 AM

check your stats at sharksscope.com

I think everything else was addressed in post.

Just as a note....60% is wow/superuser

#21 25-02-2008, 4:05 AM

You guys keep talking about 60% win rate, who ever said that?

#22 25-02-2008, 4:09 AM

OP did:

Quote:

Originally Posted by -foldemstupid

Hi to all you ppl asking how i Know im a good player live,well I would say of 52 weeks out of the year me and my pals play poker maybe 40 weeks..
Well out of those weeks I would honestly say I have brought home winnings 60% of the time ...but the key is I have NEVER taken a huge loss live.....

It's not a win rate per se

#23 25-02-2008, 4:13 AM

I have found that a good poker face doesn't translate correctly online, nor can they see the 45 under your jacket........

#24 25-02-2008, 4:14 AM

Well out of those weeks I would honestly say I have brought home winnings 60% of the time ...but the key is I have NEVER taken a huge loss live..

Must of flew past that not taking it to serious. Thinking honestly is far from factual.

#25 25-02-2008, 5:52 AM

I would strongly suggest posting some hand histories and getting some feedback as to how you play. Comparing how you do in a weekly game that you play with your buddies to really any other game is not wise.

I play in a home game about twice a month, and frankly I go there to have some fun, drink beer and gamble a little. Absolutely not a good representation of how I play or of my overall win rate.

#26 25-02-2008, 6:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by quads

Traveling with wife and friends for a weekend, always having a great time along with great food, shows, and usually great sex, regardless what happens at the tables is a much better way to enjoy poker.

Might have been a bit more information than we needed but hey. lol

#27 25-02-2008, 6:22 PM

It's because your friends have not as much experience as the guys youre playing online with.
so its more difficult and sometimes there a lot of donkeys where lucky plays an important role.

#28 26-02-2008, 12:00 AM

I too play way better live. I've profited approx. $1700 playing live over the last 4 months. Online I've lost almost that much in the same time period (about $1100). I know I still have a total profit of $600, but $1700 is a lot better. I will never play a money tourn or cash game online ever again. Oh wait I still have $2 on pokerstars.


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