Poker - Online vs. Live Play by Josh Grattan

Disclaimer: All of the following information, thoughts, and views I discuss below has been gathered over years of personal experience playing the game and being a fan of the WSOP.


(Photo Courtesy of Fulltilt.com)




Poker has become more than a game played amongst friends. Now there are tournaments with thousands of players and millions in prizes, and now with the addition of online poker, the game has changed forever. The game play of poker has always been a highly debated topic of whether it is mere luck or true skill. Luck doesn't explain why the huge event final tables always have the same players. As the years passed the game has evolved from poker nights in the basement, to huge live events with thousands of entrants and millions of dollars up for grabs. Poker transformed from a game into a sport, a live event now aired regularly on television, with millions of fans.


The skilled players are finally getting recognition for their talents and to some, their faces and names have become icons in the poker world. As poker continued to grow throughout the years, along with the Internet, the new world of online poker was born. Today there are quite a few different websites where anyone in the world can log online and play poker for real or play money with other people at any time. The two kingpins of this industry are Pokerstars and FullTilt.


With this new addition to poker the industry boomed. The online poker sites snagged up the poker pros for publicity and took over. Before all of this the largest tournament in the world was the World Series of Poker (WSOP), which is now referred to as the largest LIVE tournament in the world. With these online sites growing so popular there are now millions of people playing, and hundreds of thousands logging on daily. Now the largest tournament record is being broken regularly by Pokerstars, hosting tournaments with over a million players.


And now with poker constantly growing in popularity the websites are constantly coming up with new gimmicks and promotions to draw in more players, or keep players interested. Personally my favorite site is Full Tilt for many reasons but one of the largest is their huge draw of promotions. All the time they are hosting tournaments for no buy in with cash rewards and upgrading their site. Recently Full Tilt invented Rush Poker which has taken online game play by storm. Basically a way to play a cash game without ever waiting between hands. If you fold, you instantly move to a new table and get dealt a new hand with no delay, the speed of game play is remarkable.


There are now new poker pros, well known strictly for their online game play, and more and more frequently, middle class people are becoming millionaires overnight. Careers are being created and these sites are raking in profit by the millions... daily.


But one of the largest topics of debate now-a-day isn't just the creation of online poker, now that its been around for a few years the real debate is about the difference in game play between live poker and online poker.


Many people today believe that all forms of poker is luck. They insist that you win because you get lucky and the right cards hit at the right time, I wont go into deep discussion about this because arguing that would mean describing how the game works. And in both live and online play the game works the same. Two hole cards, round of betting, flop, round of betting, turn, round of betting, river, round of betting, and finally the showdown.


The basics of the game have not changed, but the game play in itself has. When one plays a live tournament, they have a few advantages, they are able to stare down their opponent, and 'read' them. Meaning make betting or folding decisions based off their opponents reactions and subtle ticks. There are many other ways to read as well, such as betting technique and individual player's style. Seasoned players are better at reading, and at hiding reads, another thing that remains consistent in live game play is the odds. If you are trying to hit a club on the last card to make your flush, then you know for certainty that you have a one in four chance of hitting that card. A one in four shot. But with online play, these principles don't quite work the same.


When playing poker online you cannot see your opponent, you only see a fake name and a little avatar. Now you have to make your decisions based either on the odds or the betting style of your opponents. It gets so much more in depth to the betting style because you no longer have the ability the look at your opponents face and make decisions there. The big problem comes with the odds. Many people believe that the odds are the same, same deck of cards and same probabilities of hitting cards.


But still everyone whose played online enough has noticed how frequently there are bad beats, suck outs, and a total defiance of the odds. That is because contrary to popular believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a computer program that can randomly shuffle a deck of cards. What they do have is a program called RNG (random number generator) also known as PRNG (Pseudo-random number generator), because really the numbers are NOT random at all. And it is a very difficult concept to grasp for many. So when you are playing online, just throw the odds out the window. Your best chance to win is play your opponent not your cards, and go with your gut.


Online poker is an amazing new addition to the ever growing world of poker and will continue to expand as the years pass. One thing every new player needs to remember is that when you start playing online, it doesn't matter how many years of experience you have playing live games, its a whole new game here.


Today with online poker and live poker both growing in popularity anyone interested in taking a chance to make a lot of money has the opportunity, fortunes are won and lost faster than ever. But as long as you keep your head and don't get carried away, both styles are a fun game to play with a lot of reward for success.


Hope everyone enjoyed my first blog post! A big thanks to Nikky Raney for giving me the opportunity to write for Zennie62.com.