Quote:
Originally Posted by KickingWater
How does that make sense?
A few reasons
1) the average online player is younger than a live player. As a result, the average live player at a certain stake tends to have a much higher net worth, so the $ means less to them by nature
2) by simply downloading a client, creating an account and depositing, the online player has shown a level of dedication that a live player often hasn't.
3) online, everyone at the table is there solely for poker. Live, people are at the tables for the casino. Poker is just the game they're playing this time.
4) thanks to HUD statistics, large DBs, online training tools, and loads of history forcing you to play a less exploitable style, an online player often has a much better grasp of basic fundamentals. Live players don't have these resources, and many of them follow a very basic, dogmatic strategy as a result.
5) convenience. If you're a good limit hold em player and you have two choices: multitable 5/10 on Ignition or play live 20, the preferable option is very likely the online play. When playing online, you can get more volume faster, eat your own food when on breaks, and play much more on your own schedule. A 4 tabling reg at 1 BB/100 would make around $40/hour at 5/10; this is the same as a 1 BB/hour reg at live 20 (this translates to 3 per 100 live). While there's something to be said if your local live game is actually fun (and some games are actually pretty casual and social), any time you can make a living and not put pants on, you're probably happy.
6) tilt control. One area I notice former online grinders crush live players at (even good ones) is tilt management. Since live poker is so much slower than online, the amount of "bad beats" one might expect that can cause tilt are much lower. Online players have pretty much experienced every nightmare in the book, and a 5k hand/day grinder can probably show a daily horror story of someone making a ridiculous peel w/ two unders versus their TPTK and losing. Live players often don't conceptualize the brutality of FL fully and are much more likely to emotionally react.
7) the latter. Online poker, you start at, say, $0.10/$0.20, with the stakes going up at $0.25, $0.50, $1, $2, $4, $8, $15, $30, or something similar. So by the time you hit $15, you're battling regs that have already beaten up to 7 different levels of FL. The equivalent live game would be a 3rd, maybe 4th level game ($0.50 or $1).