Taking our online game to the casino

[PokerWoody]

So after the APAT I’ve been thinking about live games and why I’ve always done so badly in them. I’ve always done well in online games and it’s always bothered me that I can’t translate the success to live games where I am generally playing against worse players and for higher stakes.

The two main problems I have are not adjusting properly to live game conditions and patience.

Patience is a tough one. I am schooled online, I am used to playing 350 hands an hour, patience is not a problem online because I am never waiting, there is always a decision to be made and the next big hand is only around the corner. In a live environment this isn’t the case, even dealer dealt we might only be getting in 30-35 hand an hour and you can be card dead for hours.

I find it hard to keep focus when I am involved so little, I am also a bit of an action junkie, I enjoy the thrill of playing poker and can find the game quite dull when there is nothing to keep my attention. Now this might be a leak, but it is not significant online, or at least I have learnt to discipline myself to the extent where I don’t think it really manifests. Live I don’t think this holds true and lack of patience is certainly a contributing factor to my lack of success.

It’s kind of an easy trap to fall in to as you see players scooping huge pots with very weak holdings, yet you’ve been sitting there folding hand after hand waiting for something solid to play. This is definitely a leak on their behalf and a reason why the games are profitable, not an adjustment we need to make to beat them. This is not to say that a little looser is wrong however, it most cases you probably should loosen up a little bit, the art is in properly adjusting to the game.

When I have played live games before I have taken my winning internet game straight to the live game and expected I would just win. This has failed, although it won’t show a significant loss for me, in fact will most certainly show a profit over time, I feel it is far from optimal in these games. So these are the changes/adjustments I think I need to make when transferring from online play to live play, please feel free to add your own.

Full ring
The first and most obvious difference is live games tend to be 9 or 10 handed. When I play online I play 6max or HU, both these games play very different to full ring right from starting hands up. I need to reduce my opening range from early position for example and my 3 betting range both in and out of position too (although I think we should obviously still isolate where possible). Hands like AJs are auto opens in 6max UTG but I’m not sure they are going to be profitable in a full ring game and therefore probably belong in the muck.

Passive opponents & Multiway pots
This isn’t really an adjustment, just an observation about a change in game conditions compared to online. In my experience, limited as it is, i've noticed that our opponents tend to be much more passive, that is they tend not to bet big enough and will largely opt to call over raise when given the choice. Whether this perceived drop in aggression is correct on their part or not i'm not yet sure. On top of the passive opponents most pots will be at least 3 way, often 5 or 6 way which should make me play a little less gung-ho than I do online.

Limping
Lol limping. I never limp online. Absolutely never, limping just kinda sucks ass. Live I don’t think I can take this attitude. It seems it can often be correct to limp, even to open limp on occasion or even with an aggressive player still to act behind you. Online we raise preflop to build a pot, to get action on our good hands, for fold equity, for the dead money in the pot etc etc. Live we don’t need to worry about building a pot or getting action on our good hands; we don’t have much fold equity preflop and the dead money just seems to encourage more dead money. Also, I think it’s a good idea to increase our preflop arsenal to things like limp reraises (which require us to limp fairly often), online I don’t really like this play much but live I can see them being very profitable.

Position
I’m thinking that we should play really very tight up front, open up a little in MP but play a very wide range of hands such as SC’s, SG’s OSC’s, Ax’s, broadway cards, basically anything with a reasonable chance of making a hand to beat one or two pair hands. The same expanding range concept holds true online of course, but live I think we can take the concept even further.

Patience
As I said earlier, we have to keep to playing cards which suit situations. Hopefully we will get enough holding that we won’t get to bored (especially as I’m suggesting playing about 40% of all holding round back!) but if we don’t, we have to wait it out and not allow ourselves to make start making errors out of frustration.

What other adjustments do you make to play live games?
What would you add to the adjustments I have already talked about?

[s4ooter]

scrote at devil status!!! 666 posts!!! ohhhhhhhh