Hi guys,

Last month I've been playing online ONLY since in my country the casino I used to play is closed this period due to Covid.
I really feel the following stuff affects both me as a person & my play:

- You don't interact with people, we are humans after all, in the live poker tables you re laughing, telling jokes, talking, drinking a coffee, water, smoke a cig with other players in a break etc etc.. a lot of social stuff which is healthy for you as a person but also keeps your focus, cause really in online poker (especially full ring games or slow tables) I lose my focus in a matter of minutes, i really just want to close the poker app and get out for a walk or something...

How do you guys handle this? I heard of so many guys that are playing online only for years or 10+ years even 8 hours / day. Don't they need social interaction at all? I mean even if you look at poker same way as you look at a job, in a job you also have mates to chat, laugh with etc..

And besides this that affects me as a person, again if it's not a zoom/fast-forward table which deals hands very fast, but a full ring slow table where i see 40-50 hands / hour I'm really getting bored fast.. and we all know, not keeping focused at the poker table affects your winnrate, and I didn't had this issue at all in years of live playing..cause in all the time when i was not involved in the hand i was either watching, studying other poeple face expresions or talking with some, jokes whatever, sometimes some dealers were very funny too and so on...I was never bored and had pretty good win rates at those live small stakes games...

But I find it impossible to keep my 100% focus at online only more than 30-40 minutes, truly..
Is there any trick you guys apply?

Play more tables to relieve boredom and become introverted to enjoy being around people less.

I play Online 25NL Ignition and Live poker as well.

I think boredom got the best of me too in Online sometimes. I would zone out, just go thru the motions. I ended up moving from full-ring to 6-handed NON-ZOOM online. Much better, I think it's more difficult, you see more hands, but because I'm seeing more hands, my win rate is increasing. I am introverted, I don't go to play Live poker to "socialize". Someone seen me shaking during a big hand last week, not because I was bluffing/strong, honestly, just because that is my body's reaction. Basically I probably have a little bit of social anxiety. He asked me why I play then, I told him "Poker is the most socially non-social game I can play." I can go and not talk to a single soul if I don't want too, just play my cards. I play LIVE because I make more money at it, simply put, LIVE tells are a real thing.

Professional online poker players usually play more than 1 table, it's ok to play one table of Heads-Up though.

If you play for 8 hours a day sitting alone in a room you gonna have 8 more hours for social interactions - it's an ok situation for most people that I know. Also playing poker online means that you don't have to spend time for the daily commute unless you need to climb the highest mountain in your area every time you start playing to feel like you are a top player

30 minutes of concentration is fine considering you've just started playing online. You gonna build mental endurance for this relatively fast.

The online is based on multi-table of multiple cg/sng/mtt and analyzing HH and multiple sessions in day with brakes, HUD is fine if the site is OK with HUD.

You sound much more like recreational player player on live than reg player on live

You can win and enjoy your time at the table too.

If you think winning players are only super introverts that don't get their head up for 8 hours in a row you're missing my point man, get a bit out, life is short.

And also, what does my point has to do with HUDs? I'm not asking how to play online man, I'm asking how other former live players are handling the lack of social interaction we had at the live tables.

Is Hud giving you social interaction or talking to you? =)))) really don't get what HUD has to do with this subject

I'll tell you more, I personally know tournament players who play sessions of 18 hours +.

And in order to keep focus, meditation, a cold shower, a walk before the session works well.

During the session, on the breaks, washing with cold water and breathing exercises can help.
In general, of course, this is a matter of practice.

You play online for the wrong reasons imo. It's not about the others, it's about money and the game. I am sure you could benefit from switching your point of view; both for your live and online game.

I followed the opposite course. I started online, and now play live. Not because I like live poker more (I do though), but because I could not see a long term future for me in online anymore and decided to get a real job. I drifted towards live poker afterwards and now play much higher than I ever did online.

Anyway, if I can clarify on the difference between online and live. You mostly don't get your enjoyment from the interaction, you need to love the game, you need to love to compete. Down the line, most grinders end up connecting one way or another, often through Skype (at my time at least, maybe it's discord now idk), but it's mostly to work on hands and spots together. or just talk on long grind sessions like Sundays for MTT players (which I can say from experience is rather interesting, but not as people would think. Thinking aloud and trying to convince someone you know is clever makes you a better player. All the while, that very player does not give a **** and is playing his town tables. The feedback you will get will be gg/sick bro pretty much / 70% of the time).

In the end, online can be boring to some extent. But it's also very stimulating in other ways, so much more than live poker can ever be. When you play enough tables, you get to play your best poker. You're not frustrated because it's been 2 hours you've gotten variations off 29o and just got a walk on your straddle with KK. You don't care about that nit you've got 1.5K hands on with 2% 3bet who 3bet you 3 times in a row, you don't care about that flip you lost in a tournament etc... Y

If what you enjoy most out of online poker is the companionship, online might not be for you.

I know that it was very difficult for me to adapt to live poker. Not to the people, but to the boredom. I am now one of the most annoying person you will meet if you don't like table talk. It's my way of dealing with the boredom without spazzing out. Going from 12 tables dealing 100h/hr to one that struggles to do 30 is hard too! When I played online however, getting a word out of me in the chat would be a struggle.

Give me the same line up online at the same stakes and I would be back in a heartbeat.

I find in live I can remember the hands better and focus a lot better. Even one tabling online I can't recall the hands at all. When I first started playing live I could barely focus for 4 hours but now can put in 4-5 hour sessions playing live tournaments easily.

I'd rather use the money I get from my job to play live tournaments. I run 3km each day, go for a walk before the tournament starts and eat a healthy diet.
During the tournament I will write down key hands into my phone for later and go through hand historys later because I meet the same guys in these tournaments.

I didn’t play much offline , but it seems to me that the offline downstreak may continue for years. The distance builds up very slowly.

And this is not only my opinion.

Good luck anyway.