Kyle Healey
What to do when you are in a midst of horrible cards. And you just finished multi-tabling 7 tables online and now you are playing 1 table live. It is not an adjustment many poker players can make, unfortunately many players do make the move from online to live and vice versa. The fact is when you play online poker for a while then switch to live games, you have to put on the brakes a bit. I remember years ago the first poker tournament I ever played live worth over $100 buyin, the owner of a well respected poker site told me "you have to bring your 12 hour game, not your 6 hour game". He was referring to me playing online poker tournaments only before and doing quite well in them. I had to rebuy in this live tournament because I played way too fast. I think there are major differences between live and online poker. Let's look at some of the differences.

- Live poker is much slower, so your patience must be better. An online poker player could literally play 10 tables at once if they really wanted to.

- Online poker tells are limited to time patterns, betting patterns, hand selection, etc. Live poker adds the element to read your opponent and his tells. On the flip side of this equation, if you don't read opponents well than this element of live poker becomes a disadvantage for you - but only until you learn to read your opponents better than they read you.

- Online poker allows you to wear what you want, yell, scream, swear, and eat sloppy at the poker table, all in the comfort of your own home. Their are distractions, however, while playing at home that simply aren't present at the poker room in the casino.

- Playing online poker, you do not have to worry about messing up. Nobody can laugh at you because they can't see you. If you don't know how to play with your chips or push them in on an all in it doesn't matter because you can just press the all-in button while playing online poker. In live poker, using chip tricks can be an effective way of scaring off your poker opponents.

- While playing live poker, you can cashout your winnings immediately. This is available on some online poker rooms too, but on some online poker sites, you are required to wait a certain amount of hours after first deposit or limited to a certain number of cashouts in a week.

The complete poker player of the future will be able to successfully break online and live games and consistently win in them. Poker tournaments and live games are increasing dramatically in size and it doesn't look like they are going to stop. Harness your game online and show off your game on TV. That'll be the poker pro of the 21st century.

Hustle Cards

Back 09/08/2006.