Four Live-Play Tips for the Online Player

Until recently, you were an online player. You’ve put in a zillion hands of 5¢-10¢ no-limit hold’em over the past few years, and played in a gagillion $11 buy-in tournaments. Now, for reasons I need not mention, you haven’t played a hand of online poker in nearly two months. What should you do?

Go play live, of course! Live poker is legal all over the country now, and chances are, you live within some reasonable distance of a cardroom. Why should you bother to play live? Well, for one, you’ll probably make more money. If you could grind it out at 5¢-10¢, you can hack it at $1-$2 live. Yes, the live game is much slower, but it plays at 20 times the stakes, and your opponents will be weaker, to boot. Besides, you wouldn’t want your poker-playing talents to go to waste while you wait for the politicians to get their act together, would you?

Here are four tips for you, oh microstakes grinder, as you play your first hands of live poker:

Tip No. 1: Look left. This is an easy No. 1. Look to your left, especially in pots that are still multiway. Don’t look at your cards. They aren’t going to change. Don’t look at the board. It’s not changing, either. Look left. Your opponents will telegraph their intentions. Over the course of a session, these little bits of information add up and become very valuable.

You’re looking for preloading. It’s preflop. The woman to your left looks at her hand, puts a few chips on her cards, takes four chips off her stack and holds them in her right hand. She’s preloaded. She’s going to open the pot if you don’t. If you open, she’ll probably call you.

The next hand, the same woman looks at her cards and then holds them in her right hand. She’s going to fold.

Not every player’s signals will be exactly like these, but they will be relatively consistent for a particular player. After you watch the players to your left play a round or so, you’ll then often know for the rest of the session what they intend to do before they act.

Even if you think that you’re already doing this, you have room for improvement. You’re probably not looking enough. Here’s my rule of thumb: If you’re paying enough attention to the game, you should see several accidentally exposed cards every hour that you play — cards that get flashed during the deal, during folds, when people look at their hands, and so forth. No, I’m not saying that you should crane your neck to look at your opponents’ cards. But cards flash all the time, and the only way that you won’t see them is if you aren’t looking. If you aren’t seeing them, you aren’t looking enough.

Tip No. 2: Develop consistent mannerisms. If you’ve been an online player for years, you may quickly come to the conclusion that your live opponents are all idiots. It’s true that, on average, live players lag behind online players when it comes to the strategic fundamentals of the game. But live players are not idiots. Many of the regulars will be fairly adept at gathering and using the information that’s all around them. In other words, they’re looking left, and some of them are pretty good at it.

To protect yourself, you should develop consistent mannerisms. Preflop, I recommend that you wait until it’s your turn to act to look at your cards. If you do that, you’ll never have to worry about tipping your intentions.

After the flop, keep your hands off your chips until you’re ready to put them in the pot. Playing with your chips during a hand is a bad habit. I do it, I can’t seem to quit, and I dearly wish that I’d never started. I noticed a few years back that I actually played with my chips differently when I intended to check or fold than when I intended to bet. Playing with your chips can bring you nothing but trouble. Don’t start.
Beyond that, timing tells work live like they do online. I often pick up information by how quickly or slowly my opponents act. For routine decisions, take one full breath before you act. That will hide the difference between the instant decisions and the three-second decisions.

Also, if you hit your flush on the river for the first time in 10 hours, resist the urge to jump out of your chair and high-five the chip runner.

Tip No. 3: Don’t force the action. If you’re an experienced online player, you’ll notice two big differences in a live game: more multiway pots and much slower dealing. These two differences can mess up your sense of game flow and have you forcing the action if you’re not careful.

For example, squeezing is a very popular play online. Someone open-raises and another player or two call. You reraise with a weak hand, hoping to win the dead money.

The key to using this play successfully is to get the frequency right. Sometimes you’re reraising with a huge hand, sometimes you’re reraising with trash, and you’re relatively balanced between the two. If you’ve played online for a while, you’ll likely have a good feel for how frequently you should try this play.

In live play, however, you’ll see far more squeeze opportunities than you do online, because people call raises much more loosely. Furthermore, you’re getting only 30 hands an hour, which means that you’re likely getting dealt, on average, only one “legitimate” reraising hand per hour. This means that you should be squeezing only once or perhaps twice per session. It can become tempting, however, because of the slow pace and all of the “juicy” opportunities to try to force the action and bluff at many more pots than that. If you do, live players will start calling you. Recalibrate for the slower pace, and be patient.

Tip No. 4: Go for value more and pot control less. It’s much easier to get value for your hands in a live game than it is online. Furthermore, your live opponents won’t be as tricky. Don’t worry as much about getting bluff-raised. Don’t pot-control as much. Use more bet-fold lines on the turn and river. Don’t miss all of that extra value by worrying about bluffs that aren’t coming.

For example, if I held K-Q on a K-9-7-8 board with two flush draws, I’d be more inclined to bet it in a small-stakes live game than I would online. In both settings, I’d expect people to call with worse hands. But online, I’d be more worried about people bluff-raising with a draw.

Most live games are tame enough that I’d bet-fold in the above situation. Some are crazy, though, and I’d be happy to get it in. Either way, I’m going for value. ♠

Ed’s latest book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimit-holdem.com. Find him on Facebook at facebook.com/edmillerauthor, and you also can check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.