Making the Move from Online to Live Play.

Every online poker player’s ultimate dream is to one day make the switch from the virtual tables to the real green felt and play in large, high prize-pool live events. After all, with poker players getting more and more educated these days, online tables have grown to be much more difficult to beat than live ones. While live tables do tend to be juicier indeed than the online ones, it’s needless to say that the game itself is quite radically different from what you may have gotten used to at PokerStars or Full Tilt. It’s a bit like making the jump from the play money tables to the real money ones, only it’s a more radical change.

The first thing you’ll notice at the live poker table is that the game is infinitely slower than online. That’s right, if you can squeeze as many as 80 hands into the hour online, you’ll have to find yourself a fast live table to be able to log 30 hands per hour. The loss of speed is not necessarily bad though. You’ll have more time to contemplate your options, and since there’s no such thing as rakeback in live poker (which means you won’t have your rakeback deals like the Pacific Poker rakeback backing you up), you will be in no hurry to increase your MGR. As a matter of fact, live tables charge you rake on an hourly basis, so you won’t be able to avoid that loss anyway.

One of the downsides of slower play is that it gets really boring after a while. Some players will nearly fall asleep at the table, folding one hand after another and sometimes not seeing any action for hours on end. They just shut their brains down and begin to lose focus, contemplating other things like the cute cocktail waitresses or the folks at the bar or whatever. Don’t commit that mistake. In live poker, reading your opponents becomes much more important than online. You’ll get tons more reads and you’ll be able to detect much clearer patterns in their play. Make good use of your “free” time and perfect your reads. This way, when you lock horns with a player, you’ll have a clear edge over him/her. Keep your eyes on the prize and stay alert.

Now for some good news: live tables are generally much easier to figure out. The fish are much fishier there and those who play solid, tight-aggressive poker become much easier to predict too. Overall, that means your table will be much juicier than you could ever hope for online. The gamblers will be much more willing to push money into the pot on rags while chasing their hopeless draws way too far hand after hand. Even those who would generally be tougher to beat are easier to predict. Being a solid tight-aggressive player doesn’t really guarantee you much at the online tables anymore, but in a live game, these guys can still eke out a reasonable hourly rate, so they have absolutely no reasons to change their approach. If you’re up against such players, put pressure on them and fold if they turn around and fight back.

On the downside, you may have to cut back on your aggression a little. Suppose you’re a 6-max online poker player, and you’re used to shoving/calling shoves preflop on your A,K. While live games are much more passive, which should mean more juice for you, if you make the same move on your A,K, you’re pretty much set to be up against pocket rockets or Ks all the time, so you want to think twice about it.

While three betting for a bluff will happen quite often online, at a live table, this move is quite inexistent. When you get re-raised there, you’d do better to put your opponent(s) on something very solid.