Hi all, I have been playing online poker on poker stars for 5 years here in the USA. I am lucky enough to live in a legal state.
First off this is NOT a post talking about rigged sites or bad beats. I wills say in the past I have had many thoughts and feelings going both ways.
My story is a bit funny. When we got online poker I thought it was awful and rigged, though I had only been playing poker about 2 years.
Then COVID game, and out of boredom and desperation I started playing online cash games on stars, and wow, now I could win. It helped that the player pool when up over 12000 percent from an average of 1000 a day to 12,000. So naturally the skill level required to win was not too high. I was not using poker tracker, but was winning about 30 dollars a day playing 30 nl.
I was a terrible player though with tons of leaks, though I have good instincts in many ways that helped.
I have been studying poker and am going through Split Suits math pre flop book for the second time. To be honest, the first time I powered through it and probably would have only got a D on a test. I was a math major and very good at complex math, but I never had a natural feel for the simpler forms of math, though with practice and everything I understand that kind of math and can do it in my head. But it took a lot of practice and work. For some reason Calculus and more advanced forms of math came easy, yet I struggles to do simple poker math to some degree. I am not being modest or humble bragging, it's just how it happens.
I am not young, though I am not old. I got into poker late. I wasted many years playing chess and that is a total waste of time. I am a good chess player, but it does not mean **** for everyday life. Though it does help with strategic thinking and planning, as well as thinking ahead. I am UFOCLUB on Lichess dot org
My point is this, I long felt that online poker and live poker play different, and they do, however I do not think it's intentional. It's a fact that a random card generator is going to be different than how real cards play.
I feel that computer random generators have the correct expectancy, but they do not have a lot of the big variance swings we see in live games. There is no doubt this is true, however you can still win at online cash games, but it will take you many more hands, and you must multi table.
I am lucky because playing over 2 million hands of online poker cash games has helped me become a very strong player. I am light years ahead of most of my competition, and I am referring to weak and average players. Sure there are poker players better than me, but I have no interest in playing against them, only want to learn from them.
It is a real shame however that Poker Stars does not seem to care about online cash games. They really need to bring back the incentive bonus because they bring in a lot of fun players. Now it takes me 20 days to play 6000 hands while multi tabling. Problem is there are not enough players. I used to play 3000 hands a day easy. I am winning but it's very slow. I start with a very low amount, 10 dollars and turned it into over 1000 dollars in the last 3 months. It gets even more difficult in the summer months because even less people are online playing.
I am optimistic that all the states that have legal poker will merge, then it will be something where you can make good money again.
Though for me, it's been fantastic for improving my game. Can you imagine what it's like studying, and then after sessions analyzing games with Flopzilla, also studying the math and many books, AND having the advantage of getting to play over 2 million games.
Most people out there will never come close to their full potential because they do not have online poker. I am also lucky to have Poker Tracker 4, this tool has been invaluable for improvement and finding leaks.
If HUDs are not allowed then you are losing a learning tool that is essential. I win without the HUDs too, but the information their is very helpful, and it is great for finding leaks.
I play cash games, though I feel that the emphasis of online poker is starting to focus on tournaments, and that sucks.
I am not bad at tournaments, but I find them less fun and I do not care for that kind of variance at the moment.
Though I believe in the future, online poker is going to be mostly profitable only if you play tournaments.
Thankfully for live poker it is just the opposite, the cash games are the most profitable and the most popular. I love playing tournament poker players when they play cash games, some of the worst players ever, generally speaking.
