Making Adjustments - Adjustments are required when moving from Internet play to live play

My career has been built around live poker. Of my 60,000 hours of play, more than 55,000 have been in live play, and fewer than 5,000 have been on the Internet. But lately I have been playing most of my poker on the Internet. Old-timers like myself need to adjust, and if we're going to play both live and on the Internet, we need to adapt our skills to the forum in which we're competing.



In a recent session at Wynn Las Vegas, the $40-$80 hold'em game was good, with several players obviously having limited poker experience. With fewer than 50 hours of live play this year, I felt more out of touch at a poker table than I had in a good couple of decades, and I played very poorly. I left several bets out on the table that a player with my knowledge should have stuck in his stack. I missed reads to make plays that a player with my experience should have made. I left the game slightly stuck and felt that I deserved it. I had failed to adjust to the situation. I didn't adjust to my own lack of feel arising from my live-play rustiness.



While live and Internet poker have many similarities, they also have their differences. I have become accustomed to playing on the Internet, and it has affected my live game in a negative way. My skills that are important in live play but are of limited importance in Internet poker have somewhat deteriorated from lack of use. As the old saying goes, "Use it or lose it." In my session at Wynn Las Vegas, I felt my live-game skills had atrophied.



The poker world has historically been divided between tournament and ring-game players, with a further division between those who play for a living and those who play recreationally or to supplement income from another job. And, of course, there have always been those with preferences for different games. Some folks have the memory skills for stud. Others are high-low, shorthanded, or heads-up specialists. Some grind it out at low limits, while others swing away at the high limits. Each game, limit, and situation has its own set of variables to adjust for.



With the Internet as the engine driving the poker powerhouse, we have new permutations. There are players who play only tournaments, those who play only live, those who play only on the Internet, some who play only limit, others who play only no-limit, and those who play some combination of both, with more emphasis on one than the other. Many, many more people than ever are making all or part of their living from the game, and the presence or absence of these people in a lineup needs to be taken into account. We are a game and an industry in transition.



My buddy John's wife, Jeannie, plays exclusively Omaha eight-or-better sit-and-go tournaments with $11, $22, or $33 buy-ins, or occasional small Omaha eight-or-better games up to $3-$6, on a single site. She's purely a recreational player with a niche. When she plays live (which has been fewer than 50 hours in her life, all at The Mirage, even though she's been a railbird for some 20 years) or plays any higher, she gets walloped. But she's been playing on the Internet on the same $500 for more than three years! As of last week, her account sat at something like $800. (Her hourly rate for any given year may be better than John's.) People like Jeannie represent a huge percentage of the current Internet poker community.



Like Jeannie, each of us has better skills, abilities, and experience at some of the many variations of the game available to us today than at others. There are places where our edge is great, others where our edge is less than great, and still others where we have no edge at all or have a negative edge. Also, each of us has some interest in game variations in which we might not have as great an edge as we do in our best game.



I have often said that accurately handicapping yourself both generally and against a given field is the key to poker success. With more choices now available, defining your own edge in different situations is not only harder than it's ever been, but also more important. If you happen to play hold'em in the niche where Jeannie plays Omaha eight-or-better, you might consider reading the third edition of Lee Jones' Winning at Low Limit Hold'em, soon to be released. It is a huge improvement over the earlier editions, which have been among poker's most popular books, and well worth reading for the low-limit player or beginner. And if you're playing Omaha eight-or-better, you should read Ray Zee's book on high-low poker and Bobby Baldwin's material in Super/System 2.



I once played at Bellagio with a young, world-class Internet pro who put up outstanding winning numbers playing $20-$40 and $30-$60. He was playing live poker for the first time. Unbeknownst to him, he telegraphed his moves in advance, holding the correct number of chips in his hand to raise if he intended to raise, and clearly preparing to muck his hand when he held rags or had missed his draw. He made no attempt to maintain a poker face. He had no understanding of the concept of live tells! I was amazed at some of the things he did. During my Wynn Las Vegas session, I likened myself to that young pro; playing live, I was not focused on reading my opponents' physical mannerisms, and I may have telegraphed some of my own thoughts unconsciously.



Because the dynamics of Internet and live poker differ so significantly, different skills hold different levels of importance. Players with good strategic skills but poor people-reading skills are much stronger comparatively in Internet poker, where people-reading skills have less value. The opposite is also true; players whose strength is people-reading skills but who have limited strategic skills are at a comparative disadvantage in Internet poker. If you want to become good at reading tells, I highly recommend that you study the Book of Tells by Mike Caro, which is now also available on VHS and DVD. Even if you have historically read tells well but have been playing more Internet than live poker lately, Caro is a good investment.



Also as part of the current boom, no-limit hold'em has come back from the edge of the grave to be one of the major factors in poker's growth. I have written before that no-limit tends to bust out bad players faster, putting stress on the poker economy. This is magnified in the current environment with thousands of no-limit games, sit-and-gos, and tourneys being played around the country and on the Web daily. Live and Internet poker poker management need to be very careful about how often and how high they spread no-limit to best protect the poker economy and more particularly the economy of their own rooms and sites.



That said, no-limit hold'em is far and away the most exciting game to watch. It is the heart of TV poker and the reason so many people have been introduced to the game. Since it gets the most coverage, it has the broadest appeal to the general public. I think no-limit hold'em is here to stay this time around, both on the Internet and live, although it is far more predominant on the Web. If you're going to play no-limit hold'em, especially tournaments, Dan Harrington's book Harrington on Hold'em is essential reading.



The very best thing about Internet poker for me, and for anybody seeking to maximize his edge, is game selection. Game selection has always been at the heart of both my edge and my consistency during my career, and is of increased value in Internet poker. With Internet poker, there are thousands of game selection choices available with a click of the mouse. As I have often said, you don't need to be the best player in the world, just the best player at your table.



In live poker, your game choices are always limited, and getting into the best game can involve long waits, dealing with transfer lists and must-move games, and sometimes even getting into your car and driving across town. Sometimes there's not a good game to be found for miles around. Yet, on some nights there are more games available on a single site than there are poker tables in the entire state of California. That's powerful game selection. You have literally thousands of games from which to choose without having to get up off your butt.



There is no reason to ever play in a bad game on the Internet. You should be able to find a game that suits your style and has good expectation for you with a few clicks of the mouse. Your expectation will be greatly increased if you utilize various sites, thus enhancing your opportunities to maximize your edge.



I love live poker. I love the social element, the opportunity to observe my opponents, and the value of tells. I have met some of the most important people in my life and many wonderful acquaintances in cardrooms. But when defining your own spot and maximizing your own edge, you need to ask yourself: Is it live, or is it the Internet? And when you make your decision, remember that switching from one to the other requires shifting gears, so adjust accordingly. Don't screw up like I did at Wynn Las Vegas.

Roy Cooke played winning professional poker for more than 16 years. He is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas. His books are available at www.conjelco.com. His longtime collaborator, John Bond, is a free-lance writer in South Florida.