Possible to play NL tourneys well but 100% SUCK at online cash games?

I'm new to poker. (No, I don't want to play with you.)

I've played in a couple of local tournaments (for charity), and feel I am headed in the right direction. No wins yet, but getting better, feeling more confident. Not making a complete ass of myself, at least.

Online, though, it's a different story. I have been playing at PP for about two months now, and I just seem to be horrible. I know there are conspiracy theorists who think the online games are rigged; call me naive, but I doubt this, at least in the case of PP.

I suppose it's possible that play differently online (more loose, I suppose), and I also know that people tend to get away with crazy things online what with all the checking and calling that goes on. However, it just seems to me that, while I stand a chance at playing well in live games, I may just never be good at online poker.

Any thoughts on this?

[UATrewqaz]

I played NL alot for fun the first few months of my playing then I jumped online to play and of course started with low limit hold em and I SUCKED. Party is not rigged, neither are any of the other big onlie sites. Limit hold em has very high variance so a good player can actually lose for awhile. Plus you may not be any good at limit...

The skills needed to beat limit hold em are VERY different from NL and completely alien to NL tournament style.

SO no this is not uncommon at all.

Low limit hold em, high limit hold em, no limit cash, and no limit tournamnet games are all VERY different and require completely different styles/skills to beat.

A few examples: NL Tournaments your number 1 goal is survival, cash games it's not. NL Tournaments if you bust you're out, cash games if you bust you can rebuy. NL tournaments you can profit by folding. You can fold every hand for an hour and move up in the standings/money. Cash games you cannot win anything by folding. NL it's very easy to protect your hands, as you can bet high enough amounts to destroy the odds of anyone wishing to outdraw you, in limit cash games you quite often cannot protect your hand or have to try to check raise to protect it. NL you can easily pull big bluffs, limit it's very difficult to pull of a huge pure bluff.

In fact there are many pros who excel at tournaments but do not excel or even bother to play cash games.

If you want to get better at limit hold em I suggest Small Stakes Hold Em and Hold Em Poker for Advanced Players, two 2+2 books.

[MarkL444]

focus on playing well, dont worry about winning or losing. thats all there is really.

[nuclear500]

Only at high buyin levels against other decent players can you get away with trying to be "fancy" at limit play. Bluffing is far more easy at NL then limit. A lot of players will check/call you down with any kind of draw or pocket pair or middle pair because its really only one bet, vs 1/3rd their stack.

ABC Poker as they call it.

Just for clarification, I am talking about NL in both cases.