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.

I can agree with some of this.

real reason: because there's no online poker in the US anymore, so everyone is a live player

omg do we really need 2 threads on this?

Though some of your points are actually kinda valid, you gonna get flamed bro.

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Im going to guess many of those guys play online as well as live.

lol @ the top 50 live players being better than the top 50 online players. you do realize that out of the top 50 live players, most of them will have had played online before. live tells also have much less of an effect than you believe, at the highest level of play, players are hardly ever going to give off a tell.

Soul reads? OP, do you believe in unicorns, pixies and gnomes?

summary: Im old and i think i know a lot of things, but i dont know poker.

if by top 10 you mean 100 and by live you mean online, then yes

Baudib, Check out who finished 85th in main this year, she's completely right brained, she's an artist, Not a math person. But damn this girl can 6 bet an online player that just doen't have his heart in it. I taught her everything she knows & she beats these kids regularly. I offered to put her head up against one of the top 2+2 online players, he backed out, then she got 85th in main. You will see much more of her because she's the best female player in the world & taught by the best.

Ugh...dont' have the energy but there are at least 6 logical fallacies in the OP.

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

Its possible that you are correct; but seems much more likely that you are grossly overestimating the amount of consistent soul-reading going on.

i'm probably not one of the top 2+2ers, but i'll give her some heads up action...what stakes you wanna play?

If you think peoples' ears wiggle when they're bluffing you've been watching too many movies. Are there indicators that you can use as a piece of your decision making process? Yes of course there are things you can pick up on live that you can't online however anyone playing the game at the top level is going to be in complete control of their body language.

Collegefund, I don't doubt that online players would win online, what i'm saying is that online poker is only a smaller version of poker, It's 2 different things. There is so much more skill in live poker it isn't even dabatable. The edge in online poker will some day become nonexistant with rake as the bigger factor because most will eventually learn math theory to the point where rake can't be beat.

This could never happen live, too many variables, the best will always be able to get creative enough to force oppenents in bad situations to give off tells.

Wow, no one's ever gone deep in the ME and not been a super skilled poker player.

Matthew ryan, I may be overestimating the ones that can do it. I just know that the top 5 or 6 players that I know that can do it will never lose to an online player if the cards break even. I'm assuming that all over the world there are some players like myself that can do this, I know some others that can, but just met them over the years playing cash. There are some very very good hybrid players that play both. I would consider myself in that category except I don't play online anymore. I still keep up with it because I want to know what the kids are up to these days, that way when I play them live it helps with reading

I'll give an example of someone I met several years ago that I thought was mainly an online guy. TK miles. He's did very well in both, but over the years playing with him he's got extremely good at utilizing things he's learned playing live. I think he's one of the best & will probably see him much much more down the road. I think he's one of the few that have the online knowledge as well has developed a killer live game around it.

"Did you have it?"

"Sorry, John, I don't remember."

I think it has more to do with quick access to funds -- if a live player sees a juicy game he can just jump right in wherever it is, but if an online pro sees a fishy game he has to wait forever to get his money transeferred to the right site, or in some cases such as FTP or AP he will not get his money out at all, and therefore cannot play the game.

pretty please?

no kidding, you could find tons of people here willing to give action. she's taught by the best though...to SOUL READ