My mother (Hi Mom!) will be pleased to know that I haven't been playing much poker lately due to time constraints and such. However, three weeks ago I did take a jaunt out to Atlantic City with my close, personal friend Megas Janis, and there I managed to log some table time.
It got me thinking about the differences between online and live poker, and why I prefer the latter. The most obvious difference, of course, is the fact that you can't see your opponents when you play online. For people who put a lot of stock in detecting 'tells' which betray the strength of their opponents' hands, this is a pretty big issue. However, for me tells aren't a big part of my game - I don't spend a lot of time looking for them, and I think I'm good about keeping mine concealed (unless Marty would like to inform me otherwise).
Thus, it has always puzzled me why I seem to do better live. If the difference isn't in the tells, then where is it? Well, let's just say, if I handn't figured out the answer, then this would be a very short post.
In the live game, I can tell who is paying attention to the hands I play and how I play them. It turns out, this is kind of a big deal. See, the practice of establishing an expectation in the minds of your opponents and then strategically violating that expectation in the most profitable way possible is a critical component of a winning poker game. You create the expectation through your play of past hands, but you can't know whether you've succeeded unless you know whether your opponent was paying attention.
Online an opponent could be focusing intently on every move you make; he could be playing 8 tables at once; or he could be drunk, half-asleep, and watching football while he plays. You would never know.
But in a casino, I can see who is watching the table and who is watching TV. I can even engage people in conversations about the action to see what they have noticed. Heck, often, players will come out an tell you how they have assessed you. For example, in AC one guy said to the table, "[Mark] is just trying to sucker us into a big pot." At the WSOP, another guy announced, "You sure like hands like 9-7 offsuit, don't you?" These guys are doing me a favor! Not only are they telling me what they think, their educating the whole table. Once I know what everyone thinks of me, it is easy to act accordingly.
As a result of this revelation, I think I will focus more on playing in a manner that will make me the center of attention at a table - drive the action a little more. If I can make people notice, I will know what they have noticed - plus, its lots of fun.
Now, I just need to find the time to actually play poker.
BONUS for Mom: This Wall Street Journal Law Blog post is about two distinguished Harvard Law professors and their personal and professional interests in poker. Here's a great quote from Prof. Charles Nesson:
It's really the poker way of thinking that is the most deeply intriguing thing to me. The essence of poker is this business of seeing from the other person's point of view... If [law students] want to do something useful in their outside time, they should play poker.
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