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Internet Poker versus Casino Poker
Rapid speed of Internet Poker
One of the main differences you might notice when you start playing Internet Poker, at sites like Party Poker and Empire Poker, is that everything seems to move so much faster. When you go to a real Casino, you usually have to sign-up on a waiting list, change your cash in for a rack of chips, wait for any seat changes and then finally determine when you want to post (the big blind) for your first hand. Compare this to an online poker site where you have an option of literally hundreds of different tables to choose from, signing up the first available seat with X amount of players in the game, and then jumping into the game as soon as you sit down. With that being said, isn’t this convenience one of the reasons why we play poker online? It sure is, but there are some important issues about these differences that you must take a look at.
Preparing to go into a Poker War
First of all, when you set your mind on playing in a B&M (brick and mortar, aka real life) casino as opposed to an online site like Party Poker, you often have a lot of time to get mentally prepared to go to battle against the other poker players. First you have drive/fly/walk over to the casino, which could take a few hours and then when you get there you might have to wait another hour to jump into the game. Although you might not notice it, subconsciously this downtime is used to mentally prepare us for the next 5-6 hours of poker. When joining an online game there often is no downtime at all to mentally prepare, and if you aren’t mentally prepared to start playing the game, those first few rounds could be devastating to your play. Thus, a good strategy to overcome this obstacle is to voluntarily watch which table(s) you think you want to jump in and observe some of the action going on for at least a few minutes (I recommend 5-10) before jumping in the game. This not only gives you time to mentally prepare yourself, but can also give you time to take note of the types of poker players playing styles at that particular table. With the new accessibility to on table hand histories, you have no excuse for not being able to form some idea of what types of players are playing.
Speed Shuffling and Dealing
In addition to being able to find a poker table relatively quickly, you will notice that online poker seems to go much faster. I often find myself yawning in a brick and mortar poker game because I’m so used to the rapid speed of dealing and shuffling in online poker games. This is a good and bad thing because first of all you’ll get through many more hands in a shorter amount of time, which helps lower the variance of luck. Mathematically, if you’re playing better poker than the rest of the table, the more hands you play the better chance you have at winning money. It’s not unusual to get through 100 hands of poker within 1 hour at online sites like Party Poker.
Taking a Bad Beat Online
The bad thing about having hands come and go so fast is that if you take a bad beat and start going on tilt, you don’t have as much time to shake it off and cool down. When we take a bad beat in a brick and mortar game, we see all those chips being physically raked in by the other suck-out and we can go outside take a walk around the casino a few times to get our heads back in the game. If you’re playing online poker and take a bad beat, I still suggest standing up from your computer, take a walk around your house or grab a drink from the refrigerator before playing another poker hand. Don’t let the rapid speed of online poker suck you in to the point where you can’t leave the table at any time.
Bluffing Online
If you’ve ever sat in a 3-6 limit texas hold’em game online like at Party Poker, you might have noticed that the games are so loose and there can be 7 players limping in preflop. This is a good thing, because you be getting a lot of action when you get some big hands. But you also must understand that people will be calling you down with bottom pair, mid pairs, gutshot draws and more because they don’t understand the concepts of pot odds and position. If you get your big slick and think you can bully people around and get them to fold without pairing up, you’re in for a big surprise. Don’t try and run bluffs on these lower limit tables, semi bluffing is okay, but pure stonecold bluffs shouldn’t be tried more than 5% of the time. If you label a particular poker player as tight, you might be able to run this bluff, but usually you’re better off not throwing in that last bet that you know will get called. However, when you do hit a hand, you want to make sure you get full value out of your hand, and value bet the river a lot.
These are just some of the differences between casino poker games and online poker games. I will be updating this page to add more significant differences to give you an edge when you start playing poker online.
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