Black Deuces – Poker Blog

This used to be a blog about me trying to build an online bankroll. Not that I failed to do so, I was actually on the good track: I made 50$ into 3k, but after a big loss one night (-700$) I decided that online poker just wasn’t for me. “Take the money and run” I told myself.

Besides of the mega loss that one night, I also found the daily online grind quite boring and less suited to my poker skills (if I indeed have any ). My experiences teach me that online poker is much more math based, where live poker is much more of a “feeling” game. That emphasis on mathematical calculation and analysis of the game has even been growing recently by the widespread use of tracking software such as Pokertracker (which I refuse to use, since I think it’s killing the game).

Or to quote Azn_Cutie at Pokersift:

To be a successful online player, you have to have solid fundamentals and a very strong foundation in math. While both live and online require calculation of ranges and equity in decisions, it is so much more vital online. My opinion is that NLHE is very close to being a solved game, especially MTTs, in an online setting.

Live poker, on the other hand, will never be solved. It has much different subtle nuances than online poker, especially in terms of reading tells. Hand equity calculations don’t need to be exact because you can narrow hand ranges so much more through live tells and this, rather than exact calculation, provides you with a lot of the edge in the game. This is not to disparage online poker or say that online players are better/worse than live players, it is simply my opinion that both of these arenas utilize completely different skill sets and mine are much more suited to live play.

I agree. But this doesn’t mean I’ll never play online again, I’m just going to focus on live poker from now on. I’ll play the occasional MMT (like the upcoming Mini FTOPS at Full Tilt Poker), but the cashgame grind is over.

So, from now on this blog will be more about my live poker, and less (although I will not abandon the subject completely) about my online game. Now it’s time to hit the local casino!

Tags: online vs live poker

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.