I guess this is potentially a huge topic. I’m sure it must have been discussed a lot already elsewhere.

My main example is that I have online games to train myself for live tourneys.

I am almost entirely a cash game player, usually playing a 70-100 BB stack in a 1-2 game. Once a month I play a tourney. I often find myself in unfamiliar spots especially when short stacked later on in the tourney.

I have found that playing some online tourneys has sharpened me up. I can even play a weird tourney (6 handed hyper turbo SNGs) and get what I need, even though my monthly tourney is very different (slow clock, 100 players etc)

Also, playing cash games online can really help my live play, simply because of the volume of hands online - you can get spots coming up relatively infrequently live, that will come up more often online due to volume... so you get the experience that you can then utilise live.

This is all basic stuff. But I wonder if anyone has any other thoughts on how they’ve used online play to improve their live play?

I played for play chips and tracked my hand history before I played live 1/2. My thought was if I can't beat play chips why would I play for money.

when I first started, I would crush live and get rekt online. Now I'm retired but have beat the micro cash games for around 2 years. I think online is much more difficult than live, BUT it's an entirelly different game.

Absolutely I think that playing online is a great way to practice, because you can get in so many hands, but also because you can play tough games without risking much money at all. Steel sharpens steel.