If u want to even start comparing online and live play, you can probably compare these two.

Live Play BI / 10 = Online play BI

beating $5 online sng's 1 tabling... probably at least 25% roi

if u want evidence, try it urself. come to ftp plz

I think this is actually a big part of why the online players are better than the live players. 'Good' players who learned online or who play mostly online tend to have a much better grasp of fundamentals, particularly the kind of maths that is especially important in sngs, while a lot of 'good' players who learned live or mostly play live seem to have no grasp of the maths involved in any kind of poker but have managed to make up for this because they have an above average ability to read other players. It's pretty well established that one of the big name players you menioned above has no grasp of how to play a short stack in a poker tournament - I'm absolutely certain that if you made him play sngs with a bunch of guys who are beating the $5 online sngs for 5-10% ROI then he would be a big loser over a significant sample, simply because in the short stack situations that comprise the majority of sng play his game has massive leaks that his ability to pick up information from other players cannot overcome. This is a guy who has millions of dollars in tournament winnings.

The thing is, and you probably have to take my word for this but its fairly easy to see why its true, its much easier for the online players to pick up the extra skills they need to compete live than it is for the live player to learn the things he needs to compete online. The online guys are essentially adding another layer on top of their already solid fundamentals, while the live guys will have to unlearn all of the bad habits they have developed.

Its obviously pretty hard to 'prove' that online players are better than live players, but its a pretty commonly held view on this forum and with good reason.

And I can accept that is the case and see that, looking back at things. It makes sense. More hands, more about the math, I get that. I just cant accept it hard core 100 % of the time. Too many variables. 50/50? Sure. 75 %? Possible. And as someone else stated, this may be my own view as perhaps I am an online player in a live players clothing. It isnt about emotion, but the math and my knowledge of the player. If the odds are correct, I do it. If not, I fold. I am not the kind of person that gets upset when someone calls my all in trips because they are on a flush or gut shot draw. Sure I get sucked out, but the Math says I am ahead.. and usually win the hand. Bottom line, I get it. I can see how this is possible that an online player will be better than a live player in many aspects. Just not all of them and not all the time. 100 % is just not probable.

and what the hell are we doing? moving ****ing ranges on villains in Wiz to see if we can push T4 profitably BvB instead of "reading people" in a casino @ Vegas and having millions... damn internet!

i wanna be a poker star!

wp

i've been to some casinos and played brick & mortar cash and tourney and yet havent seen a single good player (besides of one friend of mine, who grinds NL50 online and would crush a live NL600 or NL1000 live game if he had the bankroll)

EDIT: And i played with a lot of live grinders, who actually make a good living of live poker, and they are really clueless, they cant even calculate odds, they limp top 30 maybe and shove when hit the nuts (and get paid by millionaire gamblers, of course)

I don't think anyone was suggesting that 100% of online players are better than 100% of live players. Like many such statements, saying that online players are better than live players is, of course, a generalisation. However, a generalisation is exactly what you want when you're talking about things like attainable ROI.

For example, if I sit down at an online sng with 8 world class sng experts then I probably have -EV for that tournament. If I played 1000 sngs with those same guys then I could expect to have a significantly negative ROI. The problem is that this sng is clearly not representative of the general pool of players, and my performance against this lineup is not indicative of my expected performance against 8 randoms drawn from the pool of online players at a given buyin.

Leaving game selection aside, your ROI is essentially a measure of the margin by which you outperform the field - for these purposes you want to be comparing yourself to the average field, and not to the best or worst lienup that you can draw from the player pool. If player pool A is, on average, weaker than player pool B then I can expect to outperform a random field drawn from pool A by a wider margin than a random field drawn from player pool B - regardless of whether pool A contains a small number of players who are stronger than any individual player in pool B (because although you might be a dog in the games you play against those world class individuals, your advantage against the rest of the field is more than enough to compensate).

This holds true whether we are comparing live fields to online fields, or lower buyins to higher buyins. Once you have established that one player pool is weaker than another, it follows that the same player can expect to attain a higher ROI playing against fields drawn from the weaker pool than he can against those drawn from the stronger pool. As to whether the live pool is generally weaker than the online pool, people have already posted their reasons for believeing this to true - if you don't accept this, then the only solution is for you to play a lot of games against fields drawn from each pool (at roughly the same buyin level) and compare your results. It follows from the above that a lower ROI is indicative of a stronger pool of opposition. The only problem with this is, as has already been pointed out, playing enough live sngs to obtain a decent sized sample is likely to take a lifetime, if its possible at all.

Hope this helps.

about the ROI question, for you to see how 40 games is not a sample, lets take this "unknown" graph. "unknown" is not a great winning player, but still a winning player after 2.5K games (green line)



now take any set of 40 SNGs in this graph and you'll see that you have sets with 200% or 300% ROI as well as -80% or -100%

average ROI after 2.5K games of this player is 3% and still, after 2.5K games (you would have to play like 7 years to archieve this much) we dont know if he's a good player with a couple of massive downswings, or a fish with a couple of upswings...he's probably an average player. Even 2.5K games is not much of a sample

so, i wouldnt bother on thinking about ROI in live games (not even in online games), just learn about downswings, luck, ICM and MOST IMPORTANT: BankRoll Management and keep going up and down in stakes

GL

That was a very well explained post Voyeurism!

*blushes*

+1

The SNG that they go through in Kill Everyone was an eye opener for me on how badly very good cash and tourney pros can play a SNG. It was a who's who line up of Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Dave Ulliott, John Juanda and others... put most any of us in a cash game or big mtt vs these guys and we would probably get killed. They all made pretty big fundamental mistakes like missing unexploitable shoves, etc IIRC.

Makes sense. I appreciate the details!

Most of that is covered in the book the Poker Mindset. Great read.

It is one of the reasons I like a SnGo so much. Other game players dont adapt well to it or which cards to play at which rising blind levels. Got a few friends whom are fantastic live MTT players, but get crushed in SnGo's

lets throw a hypothetical out there.

Lets say online poker never came to be... for whatever reason. You could only play at a poker room, casino, home, etc.

What view would we have of those player abilities... regardless of the games. Would we praise anyone who played 1000 SnGo's a year as a GOD of players where as a pro online player now would be nothing playing 1000 games a year?

Seems like it may just be a matter of prospective. So what did people do 15 years ago to compare (any player types) before players were online?

this has already been recorded in poker history actually

it's called the moneymaker effect with massive amounts of fish going online leading to the actual good online players making ridiculous amounts of cash without even trying

i don't know who here has been long enough sng's to tell about the transition other than sparta/jhub/bigjoe... if u want to talk to him

Just drop it already.

What is really the point of your post?

Is it really so difficult to recognise that on average the level of competition in an online game is much tougher than vs similar or quite some higher buyins live?

Who cares about praise? The numbers remain the same, it would've just taken a hell of a lot longer for people to figure out that 1,000 games isn't all that many re: trying to determine a "true" win rate (the topic itself is flawed in general IMO but you get the idea I hope). And of course the games would've stayed relatively softer for a lot longer.



The same thing they [should] do now. Use their observation and memory skills to help surmise what different opponents try to do and why they try to do it.

Is this a general opinion? That 5% ROI is good? I see that the stakes are pretty high here, but so is also the concentration of fish...

I would say 10% + is good. Just decent live :S I really don't want to burn myself on this, just wondering.

Drop what? First if you dont want to.. dont read. Second this post was originally about expected ROI for live games. Everyone else brought up the online topic. It has my interest, I want to learn and not shun it. problem with that?

The point of my post was to discuss live game ROI's. If you dont even realize that much, dont knock me.