Quote:
Originally Posted by EDDtown
Lately I've been reading a lot of articles about online players being better than live players. I wanted to shed some light on this issue as someone that knows many players in both categories.
The average online player is probably better than the average live player these days but the top players in the world will always be live players.
The reason for this is pretty simple, In live play tells come into play. Online poker is not a pure form of poker in the traditional sense, It comes down mostly to math. This is why the game has become much more aggressive in the past few years. Marginal EV situations are pushed to the limit where as in live play, a great player may choose to flat in situations where online it may be correct to reraise or fold. Flatting gives a live player a chance to watch the player post flop & gives him options on whether he thinks the other player connected or not. Online this information is not available.
The skill level to play live at the top levels is much higher. It doesn't matter how good your math strategy skills are if you can be flatted & have your soul read. Your not going to win. Having said that, there are probably less than 50 players that I've played with over 10 years that can do this. That's why the average online player is doing well against average live competition which includes a lot of recreational players.
If you took the top 50 live pros & played against top 50 online pros for a year, the online players end up broke at the end of the period. Having said that, when I say top 50 live players, I'm not talking about commercial tv pros. I'm talking the cream of the crop, elite, soul reading players. Many fly under the radar. These players will always remain head & shoulders above the rest because they've stummbled onto the biggest edge factor in poker bar none.
top 50 LIVE players in the word would probably do a bit better than the top 50 ONLINE players in a LIVE game. The opposite is probably true for a ONLINE game. lol get the live pros to play against the online pros for 40 hours then get the online pros to play against the live pros 24 tabling for 40 hours and see who comes out ahead XD