The live VS online level of opponent play : What makes?

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Jay65

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I'm very surprised to find out and read a lot about how online poker is actually tougher than live poker nowadays (or was is always like that?).

All logic would point out to the fact that if anyone can play without leaving their house, there's a lot of fish ate the table, thus making online poker easier because of it's availability and ease of use.

Some logic would point out to the fact that there is so much information available that it is indeed easier to get better.

But I feel it's still a minority of the player who really take time to discuss poker at lengths, read a lot about it and try to improve their game with the information they find.

Are the few educated online players enough to make the games harder even if there are less of them at a table?

Then how can someone take the time to sit at a casino table and be that bad?

Can a solid online player sit at a live table because he's heard they were easier and become live fish?

I mostly play at very low limits, so my experience might be skewed, but the more I think about "How can live poker be easier?", the more questions arise...

I feel like there is no question there is more fish online, but is it just harder to exploit because the few sharks have just gotten so much better?
 
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HooDooKoo

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I'm very surprised to find out and read a lot about how online poker is actually tougher than live poker nowadays (or was is always like that?).

All logic would point out to the fact that if anyone can play without leaving their house, there's a lot of fish ate the table, thus making online poker easier because of it's availability and ease of use.

Some logic would point out to the fact that there is so much information available that it is indeed easier to get better.

But I feel it's still a minority of the player who really take time to discuss poker at lengths, read a lot about it and try to improve their game with the information they find.

Are the few educated online players enough to make the games harder even if there are less of them at a table?

Then how can someone take the time to sit at a casino table and be that bad?

Can a solid online player sit at a live table because he's heard they were easier and become live fish?

I mostly play at very low limits, so my experience might be skewed, but the more I think about "How can live poker be easier?", the more questions arise...

I feel like there is no question there is more fish online, but is it just harder to exploit because the few sharks have just gotten so much better?

I could write a novel about this, but I'm not going to bother. I'm just going to say this:

Online poker is much tougher, and the main reason is experience. When playing live, you can only play at a single table and the pace of play is slow. Online you can massively multi-table, and the pace of play at any given table is much faster than live.

A live player grinding an 8-hour session will typically see 200 to 250 hands in that session. On online player grinding an 8-hour session and four-tabling will see 2000 hands or so --- or 8 to 10 times as many as the live player. And that's just four-tabling. Because of that, online players that have the capacity to get better improve much faster than live players, purely as a function of experience at the table. It's really that simple.

-HooDooKoo
 
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Jay65

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That makes sense, I didn't think about experience at all actually as a prominent factor, and it very much is.

Experience will not teach you pot odds but I have no doubt that a dedicated, observant, and very analytic poker player can bring his game up by solely acquiring experience, which is 10 times easier to do online.
 
horizon12

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Eternal dispute offline or online. Offline players say offline harder, Online players that online complicated, everyone has their tastes.
Wash best to mix it.
 
Propane Goat

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I'm not sure how much this affects the mix, but being that you can't get information from physical tells when playing online, it seems like it forces you to get better at analyzing the information you do have. The tradeoff of course is that there are no HUD's in live poker.
 
domeburglar

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What ive seen as a majority live player is that the skill level is comparable online to live.. The thing people dont take into account is that the skill level isnt distributed as much live as it is online..

When you play online the lowest skill level players will usually play the smallest stakes, you'll get the occasional beginner playing higher but mainly they will play micro until they feel comfortable or gain experience or bankroll...

When you play live the lowest level most casinos offer is $1/$2 .. So if you want to play your forced to play that.. This puts the same people that would play maybe .01/.02 online playing $1/$2 live.. Once you move to the higher stakes live the skill level dramatically increases
 
DrazaFFT

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lol at offline players :D

I have never played live in a casino, all live experience i have are home games and afterhour bar games, the limits were close to 1/2$ but in Serban dinars. The game remided me a lot to 2nl a lot of limpers, donk bets rag ace shoves etc. if you look at 1/2 as live micro it is probably the same level of general knowledge at 2nl with probably less grinders live depends on where you play but if you move up at stakes you'll probably face lot tougher game as you do online...

Sent from my HTC Desire X using Tapatalk
 
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People who haven't put in millions of hands in simply aren't serious players, sorry. That's all there is to it.
 
ScottieDuncan

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U get more experience quicker online, however u can sometime read the players better in live poker. Maybe a wash.
 
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baudib1

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It's not a wash. You can get better live reads in a live game. Online you know what % of the time they c-bet and double barrel and how often they overbet the river, precisely.
 
rock0001

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live poker is much difficult for me because you cannot give your opponents any tells, and show any sign of weakness after losing an important hand. also you are going to play ti them face to face , i dont know how many of the fishes that play online have the courage to play all in with bad hands like j5, or q8, like i have seen in online poker. I am not saying there arent bad plays who plays live poker too, but i have seen many fishes online than in live poker.
 
stately7

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Not sure how scientific this viewpoint is, but one of the ways I reason that online is harder is…

When i play live cash or live tournaments, I'm potentially playing against the toughest players in my suburb or city. When i play online cash or tournaments, I'm potentially playing against some of the toughest players in the world - for the limit / buy in I'm choosing of course, and obv day-to-day this will vary and game selection is critical.

But yeah, does anyone else reason this way?
 
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blanco1400

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I play live 1/3 (no 1/2 at the coushatta) and online micros.. The online micros are harder.. The reason I would bet is that the sheer number of hands improves your knowledge.. even without a hud you start to realize position better you realize how to pot control and so forth.. Live players on the other hand well theres the 1 or 2 drunks, the girl that pushes with straight and flush draws, the old old man who tends to overplay hands, and the rest are online/live players who are pretty decent.. Live is easier because the tables are always much looser i attribute this to not having a physical running chip count like online and because of the atmosphere.. Plus also the much slower play makes players play worse hands than they would online.. alot more low suited ace's and what not that hit an ace and lose on kicker and so forth.. Idk random thoughts!
 
sparky_rose69

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I agree with Statley on this one lot more players that you have to outsmart and outplay by playing online vs. live not knocking the live game.
 
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Tiltt2424

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What ive seen as a majority live player is that the skill level is comparable online to live.. The thing people dont take into account is that the skill level isnt distributed as much live as it is online..

When you play online the lowest skill level players will usually play the smallest stakes, you'll get the occasional beginner playing higher but mainly they will play micro until they feel comfortable or gain experience or bankroll...

When you play live the lowest level most casinos offer is $1/$2 .. So if you want to play your forced to play that.. This puts the same people that would play maybe .01/.02 online playing $1/$2 live.. Once you move to the higher stakes live the skill level dramatically increases
YES! only reason live is weaker is because these are the lowest stakes you can play, forcing a lot of weaker players to play at stakes they wouldn't normally.
 
OzExorcist

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Random drunks can't just stumble into an online poker room. But they can, and do, randomly stumble into live poker rooms all the time and decide they'll give the game a crack.

'nuff said IMO.
 
Fieldsy

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I know you see a ton more hands online, but if you are a moron playing 10k hands a year vs. a solid player who progresses who sees 1k a year. I'd put money on the live person.

It is what you pick up and how you progress through those hands. If you are playing live with people who play cards for a living and just not a drunk casino person, chances are they might be just as good or better than online.

Another person hit the nail on the head about live the lowest stake is 1/2. All the newbs are gonna go to that. Online 1/2 is so much harder due to newbs play lower levels.
 
steveiam

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Doe's the saying quality over quantity not apply in poker ?
 
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baudib1

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I know you see a ton more hands online, but if you are a moron playing 10k hands a year vs. a solid player who progresses who sees 1k a year. I'd put money on the live person.

It is what you pick up and how you progress through those hands. If you are playing live with people who play cards for a living and just not a drunk casino person, chances are they might be just as good or better than online.

There are plenty of terrible players online. This is because at least 99% of all poker players are terrible.

Also, most competent live players have put in tons of hands online.

I'm about 99% certain that I play more hours of live poker than anyone on this site. But I probably don't get more than 25,000 hands a year, which is a slow month for an online grinder. A serious grinder can easily get in more hands in a year than Doyle Brunson has played in his lifetime.

Add on to that the long hours of study, review and reading that goes on away from the tables, and the level of experience and understanding is not within the same stratosphere.

No one would think that a pre-med student could treat them better than a specialist with 20 years of experience, but the comparison is roughly the same.

You can use a similar analogy in any other field....there are tons of people shootings hoops in the gym or in their driveway, but none of them think they can compete with Kevin Durant and LeBron.

But that's why poker is great. People actually think they can take their hard-earned money and sit at a table and win money against people who are vastly better than them. They don't even know what they don't even know.
 
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Online players range is wider than a live players range. Imho online is tougher than live.
 
Vhyre

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I enjoy both a great deal, but I have to say online is more difficult, and the most financially rewarding
 
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I agree online is much harder. The ability to read players is such a great advantage live.
 
Celtic_Green

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Why is online poker so much harder than live? (Complete with rambling)

Hey everyone, I virtually never post anything here (although I visit and read regularly), but this has been bugging me for a while and I needed to ask someone. This might be a long post filled with plenty of rambling (venting), so for anyone reading this, thank you, and buckle up. Why is online poker so much harder than live? When I was younger, I went through that phase where I thought I was the best poker player around. As the last few years have gone by, i've not only gotten better, but i've also realized that I was really bad compared to now. Overall, i'd say i'm a good poker player. I don't have a huge ego anymore, I can look around a table and honestly say to myself, "This person is really good/better than me". 3 years ago, I couldn't do that. Personal growth is a beautiful thing. I play poker seriously, but not professionally (yet, hopefully). I have a regular job, so how often I play depends on that. Some weeks i'll play 3-4 times, and other weeks, maybe once. I'm pretty solid at both tournaments and cash games, but feel i'm slightly better at tournaments. If I play cash games, I usually stick to 1/3, but occasionally play 2/5. Tournaments, I play anything from small $30 tournaments to $100-200 tournaments. I've kept track of wins and losses, and over the last few years, i've been an overall winning player. I don't need to see the numbers to know that, but it helps when my confidence is down. I haven't played much online poker since Black Friday a few years ago, but recently decided to give it a shot in my spare time, with mixed results. I started on Carbon, and withdrew about $500 within a couple weeks. Nothing to write home about, but it was still nice. I stopped playing there when they did an update around September that reduced the guarantees for their tournaments (September ish?). I've been playing Bovada and Americas cardroom for the past couple weeks, and have had almost no success. I've busted a few times, and am just getting crushed more often than not. I don't really understand why. I'm playing pretty low stakes, and I can tell that a lot of the players aren't very good. I'm now looking up at everything i've typed, and am wondering why I gave you a long back story for a couple questions haha, Back to my original question. Is it just me or is online poker much harder than live? Are there any huge differences between the two that i've just forgotten or am completely missing? I'm a pretty tight-aggressive player, do I need to change that up online??
 
rifflemao

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Hey everyone, I virtually never post anything here (although I visit and read regularly), but this has been bugging me for a while and I needed to ask someone. This might be a long post filled with plenty of rambling (venting), so for anyone reading this, thank you, and buckle up.

Why is online poker so much harder than live?

When I was younger, I went through that phase where I thought I was the best poker player around. As the last few years have gone by, i've not only gotten better, but i've also realized that I was really bad compared to now. Overall, i'd say i'm a good poker player. I don't have a huge ego anymore, I can look around a table and honestly say to myself, "This person is really good/better than me". 3 years ago, I couldn't do that. Personal growth is a beautiful thing.

I play poker seriously, but not professionally (yet, hopefully). I have a regular job, so how often I play depends on that. Some weeks i'll play 3-4 times, and other weeks, maybe once. I'm pretty solid at both tournaments and cash games, but feel i'm slightly better at tournaments. If I play cash games, I usually stick to 1/3, but occasionally play 2/5. Tournaments, I play anything from small $30 tournaments to $100-200 tournaments.

I've kept track of wins and losses, and over the last few years, i've been an overall winning player. I don't need to see the numbers to know that, but it helps when my confidence is down. I haven't played much online poker since Black Friday a few years ago, but recently decided to give it a shot in my spare time, with mixed results.

I started on Carbon, and withdrew about $500 within a couple weeks. Nothing to write home about, but it was still nice. I stopped playing there when they did an update around September that reduced the guarantees for their tournaments (September ish?).

I've been playing Bovada and Americas cardroom for the past couple weeks, and have had almost no success. I've busted a few times, and am just getting crushed more often than not. I don't really understand why. I'm playing pretty low stakes, and I can tell that a lot of the players aren't very good.

I'm now looking up at everything i've typed, and am wondering why I gave you a long back story for a couple questions haha, Back to my original question.

Is it just me or is online poker much harder than live?

Are there any huge differences between the two that i've just forgotten or am completely missing?

I'm a pretty tight-aggressive player, do I need to change that up online??


FYP :D Easier on the eyes.:fisheye:


I believe the difference is that there are more recreational players (fish) at casinos, especially at $1\$2; whereas online you'll find more grinders who multi-table and therefore have a ton more hands and experience under their belts.
 
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