Online to Live

In this article, I’m going to look at the major differences between playing online and live poker tournaments.

One major disparity is the lack of experience most live players have. By lack of experience, I mean the amount of mistakes I see players making live. I’m sure any online grinder would agree that the so-called ‘standard’ plays you would make in a live tourney differ massively from online.

One of the keys to success in live tourneys is to avoid ‘fancy play syndrome’ and just look to extract maximum value when you have the best hand. The biggest mistake I see online players making live is trying to push people off hands pre-flop, in the early stages of a tournament. Inexperienced players really love seeing flops and their opening raising range is generally much tighter than your average online player.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to three-bet light and expecting your average live player to just fold without seeing a flop when the blinds are still low. The best way to deal with this problem in my opinion is to just flat call in position with many of the hands that you would normally three-bet with pre-flop.

Live players seem to be much less aggressive post-flop than their online counterparts. This is another reason why I think it’s more profitable to just call their raises in position. Live players seem to play a much more straightforward game post-flop than online players. They may fire out on the flop but usually if they aren’t pretty strong they won’t get too crazy with firing out two or three barrel bluffs. This will allow us to show down our marginal one pair type hands without having to risk as many chips. And we will be able to confidently go for thinner value bets when we feel like we have the best hand.

Key point

Try to avoid ‘fancy play syndrome’ when playing live, and don’t expect to be able to use the same kind of pre-flop aggression. Live players love to see flops so call more in position with hands you would normally three-bet

Continuation betting issues

While online continuation bets usually tend to be 50-80% of the pot size, live continuation bets will often be 25-50% of the pot size. Sometimes players don’t consider or know how much is in the pot already and base their continuation bets on either what size the blinds are or how many chips they have left in their stack. With these much smaller continuation bets the live players will often price in draws that you would have to fold online to larger bets.

Live players also often play ‘fit or fold’ poker (meaning if they didn’t hit the flop they will just fold) so in turn when we are playing live we can often make our continuation bets smaller than we would live and get the same effect. If they have any piece of the flop they’re not likely to fold no matter what you bet, so continuation betting a smaller amount will do the same job for a much cheaper cost.

If we make these small continuation bets online, players often take this for weakness and call us down very light hoping to take the pot away from us on later streets. In a live tournament this is not normally a major factor. And if you do smash a flop in a live tourney you should continuation bet around 75% of the pot, because it won’t matter to them what the size of your bet is. If they hit the flop they will continue if they missed they will fold.

The next point I want to discuss is all-in fold equity. If you are playing a $ 10,000 buy-in tournament this money means a great deal to live players. In other words I feel that we can abuse them much more on the bubble than you can online players. When approaching a final table bubble of a live event you also have to think about how much time these players have invested to get this far. Often players have been playing for several days to make it to this spot in a tournament.

Don’t be afraid to put them to the test for all their chips. Even though live players will often call you down light, they will rarely call off their entire stack on the bubble to a shove without having a really big hand. If you are the big stack at the table you can basically have your way with them at will. In these bubble situations some players will fold hands that online players would never fold. There is plenty of bubble abuse that goes on in the online poker world, but it’s not the same when players don’t really care about making the money as much.

Most online players know you need to play for the win instead of folding to cash. Also, just cashing in a $ 109 freezeout on PokerStars pays around $ 125 and cashing in a $ 5,000 buy-in event pays $ 8,000 to $ 10,000. So you can obviously see what makes these players play the way they do.

Key point

Continuation bet sizes are unlikely to be as fixed as you will find online, and will often be based on the blinds or stack sizes. When you are continuation betting you can often bet 75% of the pot for value.

Patience, patience, patience

Patience is another key to making the transition from online to live play. To begin with, I would like to say that I don’t have a problem with people wearing headphones and listening to music while playing live. But it becomes a nuisance when people start slowing down the game and don’t pay attention to the action. I understand how boring it can get sitting there listening to old men tell bad beat stories, but remain focused.

When playing online you’re dealt around 60 hands per hour, and playing live you’re dealt somewhere in the region of 25 to 30. It’s also important to note that most online regulars play multiple tournaments at once. When I’m grinding four to six tournaments at a time online I rarely go two minutes without playing a hand. But, playing live you might not get a playable hand in a playable situation for half an hour or possibly even longer.

Believe me, after about 20 minutes of just waiting for a hand K-10 offsuit starts to look like pocket Aces. Don’t let boredom talk you into making a stupid mistake that you normally wouldn’t make. I suggest you use this extra time to pay attention to every little tell and every single little detail and you can about the players around you. You need to keep an eye out for all of the things you normally would pay attention to if you were in the first hour of a tournament, full of energy and excitement.

Spotting Tells

I’m sure most of you already know that when you’re playing online you really only have two ways to spot tells: the sizing of the villain’s bets and the timing in which they make their action. But don’t overgeneralise and apply one tell you found on a guy to every other player because you will soon find that players are all different. Most tells are player dependant, except one.

The one tell I have found online that is almost always true, is when people take a long time to act then make a huge bet or huge shove over a bet that you have made. When you see people make this play, it is rarely a bluff. When people bluff online most of the time they will act fairly quickly so as you won’t get suspicious of what they’re doing.

If you’re playing live you will still be able to pick up timing tells as well as bet sizing tells, the only difference is you may also be able to spot different mannerisms people use while playing live. These mannerisms may be indicative of the strength of their hand. As Doyle said in Super System, watch people when they look at their cards, you will have plenty of time to look at your cards when it’s on you. See how they react, and how long they look at their cards.

Doyle also said that when people have a big hand they often can’t help but look at it twice, and I have found this to be true. But there are lots of other things to look for. Watch people when they go to make their bets, watch them after they have made their bets. Are they shaking while putting out the bet? Are they sitting there stony-faced trying not to flinch? Do they take a drink of their beer when they have a big hand, or when they’re bluffing?

When people are being overly chatty, or are relaxing back in their chair, after making a bet this can often signal that they have a big hand. They feel confident and don’t have a care in the world. On the other hand, often when people are bluffing they will sit stony-faced and not move a muscle. These are just a few of the little live tells that you can pick up by observing your opponents in the downtime you have while folding your way to the cash.