Why playing live can be more profitable

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 31 December 2009 / Leave a comment

One of the key things to remember about live poker is that it is much easier to win than it is online. This is for a few key reasons, but the most important is by far the amount of information on offer. Although live poker does attract many more fish to the game than online poker does (probably as it offers a more social experience), the reason it is easier to win really just comes down to the extra information on offer.

Without understanding this about live poker, it can often seem unattractive if you are used to multi tabling online. As you are playing so many fewer hands live, the sums you use to calculate your hourly rate online online can make it look like it is not even worth bothering ever playing live.

However, unlike online, where it is basically impossible to push a rate of much more than four big blinds per hundred hands over a large sample size (and even this is very high); live you have no such problems. In very juicy live games, these numbers can get into the twenties, as the extra information given out by weaker players, coupled with much larger technical mistakes make for very easy pickings.

Weak players get consumed very quickly online, due to the fast speed and high standard of technical play, but this is not so live. Here they can last for years against other weak players in their regular game, a sort of blind robbing the blind effect that keeps everyone thinking they are vastly better than they are. A technically solid and astute player sitting in these games is frequently like letting a fox into a chicken coup, and they win fast and hard, easily out doing any rate available online.

Using sums from your online play and thinking about taking a walk down to your local game is nearly always a mistake. The online game is very different from live play, and many online players scorn good live games on the basis that they do not fully understand the massive differences between the win rates. Do not make this mistake - on the whole the biggest fish in the game usually play live, and you are missing out on a huge amount of money if you do not sit down in a few of these games in between your online play.

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