Online Poker vs. Live Games

Well lately I have been interested in the difference between live play and online gaming (referring to Texas Hold 'em). As we all know it is a limited information game, and when playing online you are limiting the information to your brain even more. No more nervous ticks, smiles at the corner of the mouth, or watching someones eyes light up before they realize to keep it cool. Its just cold hard math, and the only reads from your opponent are the time it takes to act, the action itself, and the amount bet. This may be fine for some, but I think a lot of people playing online would benefit from just going to a live game.

In a live game, your mind is taking in more information than you are aware of. Sub-consciously monitoring the muscles in the faces of your opponents. Heart beats, breathing patterns, you can even verbally address the opponent and see how they react. This is how poker has been played since the beginning, and just recently we see the online explosion.

Online poker is very convenient for many reasons. It brings the casino to your house, which in turn saves on gas. It usually has many deposit options that are easy to work with. And a major plus is the ability to play more than one table at once. With that being said, we have to examine the con's of the online gaming as well. It can sometimes be very difficult to withdraw your money from the online gaming company. Like I said earlier, the lack of information to your brain would have to go in the negative category in my opinion. Finally, we've reached the darkest side of online gaming... Collusion, Bots, Cracks, Hacks, Client Cracks with screenshots, and more. The online gaming boom attracts just as much attention from people looking to defraud it. It is a industry extremely susceptable to fraud due to how unregulated it still is, and of course the fact that it is program based and programs can be manipulated.

There are situations where when you sit at a 9 person sit and go, you are facing 1 person playing as the other 8 opponents. Ultimately he is seeing 16 hole cards for every 2 you see. Colluding alone, or self-collusion. Then there are times when you are against a team of people who have a shared database so they can see each others hole cards and decide who should play the hand against you. That would be collusion. Then there are bots that just make the best decisions they can make at all times. They will usually remember everything you do in a database in an effort to get a percentage of how often you might raise pre-flop amongst other stats. These stats help decpiher how good of a hand you have. These make it extremely hard to win and of course are giving an unfair advantage to the people using them.

Cracks and hacks, I have seen people advertising their method of cracking a users client, and basically taking a picture of what is on their screen and sending it to their own computer. This would result in a picture of the other player's hole cards. Do you want someone to know what your hole cards are? Of course not, and now seems like a good time to point out that the only way someone will know your hole cards in a live game is if they figure it out, or if you flip 'em over.

Your not always going to be in an unfair game, but if you play a lot online I'm willing to bet you've been up against bots at the least, and most likely collusion too. Try more live games if you are able too, it might just pay off.
-omnipoker-omniblogger