Poker at it's core is not about reading people's faces, keeping a straight face, or who has the bigger balls - it's a mathematical game. You might be surprised to learn, that for HU games, there is such a thing as an optimal strategy: one where you can tell your opponent exactly how are you going to play, exactly what you do in every situation - giving him the ultimate 'read' on you - and no matter what he does, he will at best be 0EV. That's right, you can be undefeatable without paying the slightest bit of attention to the opponent - just by playing according to a certain system. Online play brings poker closer to this pure form, a battle between player's strategies, and it's in this area that online players excel. Most online players have a 'standard' strategy that they perfect over time, bringing it closer to the point of being theoretically unexploitable. Moreover, they will have more experience at adjusting their strategy to counter perceived weaknesses in the strategies of their opponents, simply because they can play so many hands online.

Perhaps you are right, an online player with zero live experience could be at a disadvantage in a live game. But it's likely that the online player has played more hands and knows more about the actual game of poker than anyone else at the table. With a little experience, he can complement his superior understanding with things like physical tells, and crush the games. It's much harder however for someone who relies on physical tells to succeed online, as you know all too well.

Interesting, I actually did work in QA for two summers (while home from college) at a prominent sports game developer doing testing. A few people I knew there working full-time did get promoted internally to the design team.

rob,

Huh?

So basically cliffnotes:

Robfulop repeatedly explains for several days why online players have a huge disadvantage when playing seasoned live veterans (by supplying several unsupported facts that don't add up/make any sense)

1) playing opponents they do not know, thus they have no basis to put them on "ranges" of any kind

Yeah, bc when you sit at a new table for the first time online, you have automatic hand ranges for everyone instantly

Well then I think you're radically overestimating the quality of competition at those games. Your points 1-3 have merit, but they are easily trumped by the fact that those games have many mediocre players who consistently make huge fundamental poker mistakes.

rob, i began my poker "career" online, that's primarily where i learned the game and built my initial bankroll. i made my first deposit in late 2003, but didn't finally start to beat the game until i found 2+2 in spring of 2004. for 2-3 years, i played full-time online, while making excursions to atlantic city as often as possible (i lived in nyc, so i'd drive down every 2 or 3 weeks on the wknds) and a couple times a year to las vegas. i moved to las vegas in fall of 2006 (coincidentally just before the passing of UIGEA) and have played live almost exclusively since then. i currently play the bellagio 10-20 and 25-50 games full-time.

this rundown of my poker background gives you my "credentials," so to speak. i'm well-acquainted with BOTH online and live poker. these numbers are guesstimates, but i've probably logged over 500,000 hands of internet poker in my life, as well as over 4,000 hours of live play.

with that in mind, i can tell you unequivocally that online games are MUCH, MUCH tougher (especially now in the post UIGEA environment) than live games, and that anyone who's a long-term winner at online 2-4nl would be a winner in the bellagio 10-20. personally, i'm a solid winner in the bigger bellagio games, but i can no longer beat 5-10 online: whenever i've put money online in the past year--10k here, 15k there--and dabble in those games, i invariably go bust; it's quite humbling.

i think torello hit it on the head: the kids who you think are "internet players" are not necessarily WINNING internet players. true online winners would adjust to live play in very short order and crush the games. you are terribly misguided to think otherwise.

sidenote on my A5o vs 77 hand: he called, i lost. it was only meant as a counter-example after you said you've never seen anyone bet-3bet-shove for big money without the nuts or near-nuts. i was saying, well, i just did it the other day for over 200bb's with no pair/no draw/no outs. your LC game must be even softer than you realize if no one there is capable of the same.

Rob, thanks for continuing to focus the dialogue. A few thoughts.

I agree that hours of experience reading people's behavior can result in valuable information about people's potential holdings. I am primarily an online player, but before I took up poker I was a professional actor and I have found many of the skills I learned in that field play a large role in live play. A number of the examples you provided are one's I have used, but I have never heard anyone else talk about them. (my being an internet donk and all)

I also agree with the people who argue that online play forces you to think in terms of ranges and provides much more room for experimentation, leading to more creative play.

What I haven't heard people talking about is how ideally the two work together. I had an interesting hand at the commerce a few years back where I was sure my opponent had aces so after a fair amount of action I laid down kk on the flop. I was extremely proud of my read and mentioned it to a friend of mine who was also at the table. He sat there doing math in his head and finally turned and asked me how sure I was about my read. I said I was at least 90% sure. He then asked me what I thought my opponents range was for the other 10% and how likely each holding was. After I told him he went into the tank again. A few minutes later he turned to me and said, "Terrible fold, You needed to be at least 97% sure to fold there." After we talked about it I realized I had been separating my reads from my normal more math based game. Ever since then I have tried to treat my "spidey sense" much like my hand range reading skills, they are both just tools to help me use the math better. I think this is part of the disconnect some of the internet players feel when they hear live players say "I was 100% sure so I did X" All their range reading instincts want to try and quantify that read, and they are damn sure that 100% is not the right answer.

The other piece of the discussion that struck me as particularly interesting was the debate about whether it was possible for the shove to be made with air (I really like the term napkins btw). This is one of the areas where I feel online play is really pushing the envelope. Due to a number of factors, including hand trackers and hand volume, when a situation comes up where someone says "well he could never have X" the best online players inevitably come to the conclusion that mathematically they really should have X some percentage of the time. And since it is so much easier to identify those situations, and since those situations come up more frequently, the good online player is much more likely to make a play that an experienced live player like yourself wouldn't believe was possible.

You simply cannot make a statement like that without either (1) giving your personal qualifications to make such a sweeping statement presented as if it were "fact" or (2) giving some sort of reference for such a statement.

Yes, if somebody came forward with a perfect game-theory centric bot for HU NL that could simultaneously take down Ivey, Greenstein, and Johnny Chan in longish sessions, I would be shocked. If such exists, can you do me the favor of pointing me towards a description of such? I've only been playing the game for 25 years, so I fully admit that some of the advanced language and sophisticated concepts and terms such as "range" and "decision tree" may baffle me, and I will try to not let my lips get tired reading it .. so PLEASE point me towards the perfect HU bot description.

How long do you think it takes Chris Ferguson to "adjust" to the advanced methods you speak of? Seriously, how many years will it take him? What is the "skill" you speak of that is only available to those schooled on the virtual felt? Because that's my question .. what's the big secret to reading a spreadsheet full of statistical data about my opponent, and constructing an optimal line based on the various hands he may be holding? Such has very little to do with the skill of deducing the right line THIS TIME, not last time, not next time .. but THIS VERY TIME that the villian is moving his chips into the middle when the third flush card hits the river ... making my set look not nearly as sexy as it did on the turn, when it was the nuts. Please tell me how YOU make this decision better than I do ... and how the perfect gamebot you describe makes better than YOU? Because I read your words, and without a shred of support .. they occur to me as quite puzzling.

Bingo.

Did I ever use the term "huge disadvantage"? If so, my apologies. What I meant to say, and what I believe I said several times is that most online players (not ALL, but MANY) are not nearly the favorites they think they are when they stumble into a higher stakes NL ring game, and in fact, lose simply because they make the fatal mistake of self deception ... a mistake so large that one big swoop negates any and all possible advantages they have from having played a magnitude more online hands.

And while I can't prove such, I can and have offered a pretty significant data point .. my personal observations over the past few years .. witnessing many online pros come and go, mostly go.

BINGO, exactly right. And when you play at LC, or the Bellagio, or the Commerce, you have no such thing. And given how such is occurs to me as a vital tool when deciding how to play any particular hand against any particular villain, I have a hard time understanding why somebody who uses such tools fancy themselves a favorite in a totally different environment, where such tools don't exist. I put some thought into a reasonable sample situation yesterday involving holding AK vs a A 7 9 J board, and nobody has bothered explaining to me how they personally deal with such situations online, or offline. Maybe you'd like to.

sure, if you play baby no limit live, you can beat it no problem since there are indeed a lot of pure bobos. But you won't win enough money to make it worthwhile. So you need to play higher, and we both know that as you move up, the competition isn't as "rich" in terms of poor players ... so not as many fundamental mistakes will be made .. not even close.

I've seen some make the transition. I've seen most disappear. I'm not suggesting that a winning online 2/4 player can't eventually make the transition ... all I"m saying is that such a player is not a favorite WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR, okay? Because that's what I see all the time. Online genuises waltz in, wearing IPODS while smugly thinking that they are the smartest guys in the room .. and they end up SPANKED. The ones whose egos don't get in the way adjust, but a lot of this adjusting has to do with retooling one's decision making. I'm sure you learned a lot after 4,000 hours live .. and my guess is that when the number is 20,000 hours .. you will be MUCH better playing in a tougher game than you are now. Experience counts ... in BOTH forms .. I'm suggesting the skill set is not as overlapping as you may think .. given you are an expert in both forms ... you are a reasonable candidate to actually add value to this discussion .. dig down inside and let me know.

I'll accept that online play is great as "training" for success at the offline version of the game .. but I just can't accept that such is a substitute. And I'd be surprised if you claimed it was. Obviously the 400,000 hands you played online gave you strong instincts .... "card sense" for lack of a better term. Now overlay this with a knack for reading players, and shielding your own actions, and you have an E ticket. I'm suggesting the 'reading players' and 'shielding' part is vastly important, that's all. More so than people who don't have such skills give them credit. This makes sense .. it's only human to discredit skills and knowhow that one doesn't possess or understand.

BTW, my hat is off to you if you can beat the bellagio 10 20 day in /day out. Last I played there, it occured to me as basically unplayable ... very very tough lineup ... maybe it's beatable, but certainly not the type of game that one can 'crush'. Maybe it's different on different days of the week, but without strong producers, that game was a NIGHTMARE, everybody tight/aggro ... capable of full bluffs .. and nobody had that deep of a stack anyway so why bother?