The Transition From Online To Live Poker

These days a lot more people play their first hand of poker online, mainly due to how accessible it has become. After some time playing online the majority of people get the bug to play live. Many people find it hard to adjust, myself included, so I’m going to outline some of the common mistakes online players make in the live arena and how to counteract them.
Playing Too Many Hands
Online players are used to playing many tables at a time. As an online tournament player, on a Sunday I’ll often be 10-14 tabling. Playing so many tables means you are playing multiple hands per minute. While live you could go 30 minutes without being involved in a hand.
Ways To Counteract This
Be aware of how many hands you are playing and your table image. The desire to play a lot of hands generally comes from boredom and frustration, a good way to stay active is to pay direct attention to all the other players and hands as they happen. You will learn a lot about how the players play which can obviously be used to your advantage when you get involved in a hand with them. Be patient.
Distractions
I’m not saying don’t listen to music, but I find it unbelievable how many young players who listen to music are listening to it so loudly they cannot hear the dealer or other players. This puts you in a huge disadvantage as its going to be harder to concentrate, thus you may end up missing some action behind you resulting in you making a big error.
In terms of the Internet, nowadays everybody has an iPhone/Blackberry, and a lot of players spend the whole time browsing Facebook/Twitter if they are not involved in a hand. You miss out on all the information you could be picking up from other players at the table.
Ways To Counteract This
Listen to music on low volume so you can hear all that is going on around you.
You get a break every two levels in most live tournaments, so wait until then to go online.
Adapting Your Ranges
A general rule of thumb is live players play tighter than online guys do. For example, online, when someone opens in mid-position and you have 30 big blinds and A-Q, the standard play would almost always be to three-bet call. Live can be slightly different, I am not saying there won’t be spots where three-bet calling is correct/optimal, but other avenues should be explored where folding or peeling could be better.
I also think people get it all in post flop a lot lighter online than they do live. I think this occurs mainly because if you bust a tournament online, there will be another one starting within minutes. While live, you may have to wait days or weeks to play your next live event. I don’t think there is a drastic difference, but definitely worthy enough to not stack off as light as is standard to do so online.
Ways To Counteract This
Just tighten up ever so slightly and really think about your decisions more than you would online. There will be a lot of situations where an online player I know will bust a tournament and refer to the bust out hand as standard, while often given his image and the other opponents involved, it is far from standard.
To conclude I think the most important factor for an online player getting better live is experience. You learn so much every time you play a tournament, so getting out there and playing is really the best advice I have been given and can pass on. ♠

Nick Heather finished fourth in a $1,000 no-limit hold’em tournament at the World Series of Poker 2010. He plays and blogs at PaddyPowerPoker.com.