Brick and Mortar Easy?

[HandHack1]

I play pretty much exclusively online poker. Every once in awhile however, I go to the Casinos every now and then.

What I find is that the Casino games are easier to beat than on the internet. Does anyone else find this true? And why?

[ QUOTE ]
I play pretty much exclusively online poker. Every once in awhile however, I go to the Casinos every now and then.

What I find is that the Casino games are easier to beat than on the internet. Does anyone else find this true? And why?

[/ QUOTE ]

First of all, it really depends on the casino. I have played in LA, Vegas, and Niagara Falls - and I would say that you are probably right except for LA.

I think a big part of it is that usually, within 5-10 hands, you can pick out who are the real players and who are the ones who you can beat - you can sense it through factors not available online such as body language and how they act when betting and folding - do they act out of turn? do they forget to post their blinds? do they have that "deer in the headlights" look?

And so what makes it easier isn't so much that the players are better or worse - its just that online, its much harder to tell.

I say that LA is the exception because there, while the players may not be highly skilled, most of them are pretty hard-core and have played A LOT of hands.

[pudley4]

It's almost universally accepted that online is harder than B&M (at the same limits). One of the biggest reasons is the difference in the number of hands per hour. Online, you can get 60 hands/hour (at a full table; shorthanded tables can be around 100/hr). You can also multitable. So playing 4 tables you can get 240 hands/hour. In a B&M cardroom, you'll maybe get 35 hands/hr. So you can play a lower limit online and still have the same win rate ($/hr) and have less variance.

My take...

I think online is much harder than B&M because of aggression.

Aggressive players are much more likely to adopt optimum strategy at poker... and on-line players balls increase by like 125%.

When someone doesn't have to look you in the eye... it's way eaiser for them to cap it with bottom pair and/or re-raise all in with a draw.

At lower limit B&M casino's you usually don't see this uber-aggressive nature.

[ZenMusician]

No one got the correct answer yet...

The correct answer is this:

At the casino there are craps, slots, poker, baccarat, blackjack, let it ride, etc
and Grampa wants to come in and play all the table games. Hey, poker is
played at a table! When I deposit $500 dollars at SuperPokerOnline I am
buying in to play poker...and I don't want to have to reload or wait 100
years to cash out small profits. Gamblers generally frequent casinos;
Poker Players generally frequent poker sites. Therefore, better players
at a poker-only type of venue. That said, I would wager card-room
games would be much harder to beat than casino spread games for
the same reason.

-ZEN

all the responses are good....

what i'd really stress is that online there is alot of multi-tabling by either good players playing Tight-aggressive or mediocre players who play fairly tight simply because it's hard to play alot of hands with 3 tables going and they are getting the action they want thru being tight multi-table.

i played bricks-n-mortar a few weeks ago in niagara falls (canadian side) and it started tight (after i'd waited 2 hours). but pretty soon everyone (except me and one other guy) loosened up. i just don't think most people have the interest and/or the discipline to play tight at bricks=n-mortar (i find passive/aggressive more complex, but more people are passive at B&M).

i have found ONLINE full table low limit (4-8, minimum 35% pre-flop%, any lower is tough) pretty easy to beat without too many large drawdowns. but i had this habit of getting involved in no-limit (Some horrendous luck, but two hands can wipe out a week of 4-8 limit profit) and shorthanded and didn't have the bankroll for it. shorthanded is especially volatile when the table gets short. and it's impossible to hide. six handed or ten handed, you can pretty much hide and regroup when you are running cold.

when i look at some of the characters who play no-limit at niagara falls, i can't imagine them playing for six hours straight on the internet. just over-the-top thug persona guys. pretty funny!!!!...

[ QUOTE ]
IIn a B&M cardroom, you'll maybe get 35 hands/hr.

[/ QUOTE ]

Damn! What casino do you play at? Here in LA at The Bike we're lucky to get 25 hand/hr at NL (with a full or nearly full table).

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
That said, I would wager card-room games would be much harder to beat than casino spread games for the same reason.

[/ QUOTE ]
This isn't my experience.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That said, I would wager card-room games would be much harder to beat than casino spread games for the same reason.

[/ QUOTE ]
This isn't my experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, it depends on the city. Here in LA it's much harder to beat local card rooms like The Bike, Commerce, etc than the Indian casino's outside of town. I love going to those casino's on weekends because you find all sorts of tourists who want to play NL and just give their money away. They get drunk, go play slots, blackjack and then come into the NL area and you drool hoping they'll get a seat at your table.

[ohnonotthat]

Good point - nice job.

*

"Dead on b-lls accurate" ? ? ?

- "Yeah, it's a industry term"

*

(I just dated myself but that is one of the funniest lines ever heard in a film).

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

B&M games tend to be softer because:

1) Easier to profile your opponents (tells & telegraphs). More time to observe and more things to observe.

2) More tourists and inexperienced players ("I'm bored of blackjack, let's try poker")

[ QUOTE ]
B&M games tend to be softer because:

1) Easier to profile your opponents (tells & telegraphs). More time to observe and more things to observe.

2) More tourists and inexperienced players ("I'm bored of blackjack, let's try poker")

[/ QUOTE ]

you guys keep saying easier to get tells in person which i agree with... but i do find online it's simple to figure out someone's VPIP really fast whereas bricks'n'mortar it takes alot of concentration (good eyesight too) and in an hour the table can change alot (in an hour online you've played way more hands and hopefully taken advantage more of the soft players).

this might be a more a symptom but online the preflop % is much lower......... and i just think all the rest is somewhat immaterial compared to that.

[ QUOTE ]
...1) Easier to profile your opponents (tells & telegraphs). More time to observe and more things to observe....

[/ QUOTE ]


I'd be interested in hearing you expand on this.

[ThinkQuick]

I am not convinced that more tourists and inexperienced players play B&M poker than online poker.

The thugs and grandpas may not deposit online, but I think that the majority of inexperienced B&M players nowadays are younger kids who have seen poker on tv and are playing hold'em a lot with their friends. these guys do play online, and there's lots of them.

The poker explosion, including ads for online sites featured regularly on tv, has also allowed inexperienced players that are disinterested in live play for whatever reason to play lots of online poker. I'm imagining middle aged guys too embarassed or busy to go to the casino, people like my mom who play the blackjack slot machine because she's afraid someone will yell at her at a blackjack table, or people who live too damn far away from B&Ms. These people suck, but you'll never find them at your casino.

Arguments?

[tippy]

Many poker players are simply there to have a good time. They come in for a weekend and like to gamble, drink and eat and basically act like high rollers. The same guy who plays 10-20 online comes to the casino, but unlike playing online, he decides to stay up all night,he decides to have drinks, he decides to watch the waitresses and most important of all, after doing all this he just can't stand the boredom of only playing 30 hands per hour and therefore his game goes downhill. He becomes anxious and lowers his standards, which in turn puts him in unfamiliar territory and out of his comfort zone. After loosening his PF standards he now is confronted by many, many more Postflop decisions that he doesn't normally encounter and therefore makes alot more mistakes whihc the regular BM player catches.

BM requires adjustments that some Online players just can't (or don't want) to make..

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Uh, you can't see your opponent's hand shake online. More time to watch behavior during the hand. When you're about to bet your unimproved AK on the river after a flush draw missed, you can see your opponent picking up his chips to call and just check intead of betting.

[AaronBrown]

I think it's dangerous to reason from the average skills of the opponents. It's true there are more bad players at a casino than online (Poker cardrooms have fewer bad players than casinos), but there are some very good players who want that money. Think about horse racing, the average bettor at the track is picking based on names or hunches or some silly system, but that doesn't mean it's easy to win, there are serious handicappers who grab the good bets. You don't have to beat the average bettor to win, you have to beat the best ones.

Casino poker takes different skills. One of the most important was already mentioned, telling the good players from the bad ones and staying away from the good (that's if you want easy money rather than the best Poker). Another is guarding against your own tells, and not getting suckered by other people's false tells. You need much better observation and memory skills, and it helps to be able to read people.

[ QUOTE ]
Uh, you can't see your opponent's hand shake online. More time to watch behavior during the hand. When you're about to bet your unimproved AK on the river after a flush draw missed, you can see your opponent picking up his chips to call and just check intead of betting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh come on that holding the chips to prevent you from betting is the oldest reverse tell in the book : )

[ThinkQuick]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Uh, you can't see your opponent's hand shake online. More time to watch behavior during the hand. When you're about to bet your unimproved AK on the river after a flush draw missed, you can see your opponent picking up his chips to call and just check intead of betting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh come on that holding the chips to prevent you from betting is the oldest reverse tell in the book : )

[/ QUOTE ]

Haha. indeed it is!
"look, I have chips, DON'T BET INTO ME"

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="red"> Uh, you can't see your opponent's hand shake online. More time to watch behavior during the hand. When you're about to bet your unimproved AK on the river after a flush draw missed, you can see your opponent picking up his chips to call and just check intead of betting.

[/ QUOTE ] </font>

[ QUOTE ]
Oh come on that holding the chips to prevent you from betting is the oldest reverse tell in the book : )

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Haha. indeed it is!
"look, I have chips, DON'T BET INTO ME"


[/ QUOTE ]

I ignored him when he posted <font color="red">that</font> one. I was hoping he’d just go away.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Exactly. Now how do you see that online?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Next time you have something to say to me, say it to me directly, dweeb.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Uh, you can't see your opponent's hand shake online. More time to watch behavior during the hand. When you're about to bet your unimproved AK on the river after a flush draw missed, you can see your opponent picking up his chips to call and just check intead of betting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh come on that holding the chips to prevent you from betting is the oldest reverse tell in the book : )

[/ QUOTE ]

Ive seen some LP's do this when they intend to call. I check, and then they check it through. Its a great way to get to showdown with a PP when there are overs.

[ QUOTE ]
Next time you have something to say to me, say it to me directly, dweeb.

[/ QUOTE ]


In this particular instance, sir, I was not "speaking" to you.

You can bet your b/r, sir, whenever I do have something to "say" to you I will.

Have a nice day, sir.

[paperchamp]

[ QUOTE ]
My take...

I think online is much harder than B&amp;M because of aggression.

Aggressive players are much more likely to adopt optimum strategy at poker... and on-line players balls increase by like 125%.

When someone doesn't have to look you in the eye... it's way eaiser for them to cap it with bottom pair and/or re-raise all in with a draw.

At lower limit B&amp;M casino's you usually don't see this uber-aggressive nature.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is the best post in this thread and I am very suprised nobody has even mentioned it.

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is the best post in this thread and I am very suprised nobody has even mentioned it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. That about sums up the root issues, because by and large, there are the same percentages of good and bad players both online and in the B&amp;M casinos. The difference is the aggression factors of both those good and bad players, and the ways in which you must change your game for the different casinos.

For me, I have better results in B&amp;M poker rooms, and the lesson I would take from that is that I have more EV playing in that setting. In other words, it's easier for me. Others may find online play to be the most profitable because of their own skill sets.

I find B&amp;M so much easier than online. Here is something I posted on the gutshot forum

[ QUOTE ]
I prefer to swallow them alive and wriggling.

It seems from reading here and at other poker related forums up and down the globe that the majority feel the internet offers the best pickings for a competent poker player. If you hadn’t experienced both bricks and mortar and online play you’d be forgiven for thinking that the internet was the largest fish pool ever created and the card clubs were all frequented by large fish of the toothy, blood hungry variety. I couldn’t disagree more with this generally held view. Bare in mind I’m not talking games involving big bucks here, but the kinds of tournaments you can enter and still feed and cloth the kids when you loose. I’ve racked up the most hours, like a lot of recent converts to the game, online in the comfort of my own home.

This year I’ve taken the plunge and started playing live at card rooms. The first difference I noticed is that the standard of play is ‘visibly’ far worse than online. No longer do you have the problem of figuring out whether a particular player is doing some odd moves in a bid to mix it up or be tricky. You just have to observe most players for a round or two and it is immediately obvious who has a clue and who doesn’t.
Notice that a player never looks at the pot or if they do very briefly and with little interest (to them it is either big or small)? They don’t know pot odds. Online that info wouldn’t be available immediately.
Are they making constant beginners mistake and asking for rule clarifications? Again another gem of info, not given online.
Are they drunk, distracted, nervous? Easily seen here, not so online.
If you frequent the same card room for any length of time you find yourself on tables where you know most of the opposition. No longer are you facing a random table made up from a pool of thousands of unknowns.
Of course all these things apply equally to yourself and you have to be more aware of your own shortcomings, but if you’re aware of everyone else’s your half way there.
Another factor, a lot of online players ‘seem’ to read more literature on the game, and appear to be more aware of tournament dos and don’ts.

The old stalwarts of cash games seem to be under the impression that they can take the skills learnt in cash and get by with that alone. They don’t think they need to change their A game to incorporate these new tournament concepts. Online players are used to playing tournaments, a lot having never played any other type of poker. Online if you go out, you can be back in a game within minutes. Playing live that might mean your lot for that evening. Players may hold back from risking an early end to their evening’s poker entertainment and they end up giving an observant opponent the edge they need.

So to all those low stakes players scared of mixing it up with the ‘big boys,’ take those skills you’ve learnt from many hours of fishing and go and catch some live ones. Believe me the taste is that much more satisfying.

[/ QUOTE ]

[dogmeat]

[ QUOTE ]
It's almost universally accepted that online is harder than B&amp;M (at the same limits). One of the biggest reasons is the difference in the number of hands per hour. Online, you can get 60 hands/hour (at a full table; shorthanded tables can be around 100/hr). You can also multitable. So playing 4 tables you can get 240 hands/hour. In a B&amp;M cardroom, you'll maybe get 35 hands/hr. So you can play a lower limit online and still have the same win rate ($/hr) and have less variance.

[/ QUOTE ]

How, exactly, does either the number of hands per hour, or multitabling increase the variance, or make the game harder?

If you can play a specific limit with a certain win rate, playing more hands per hour does not lower your win rate - or am I missing something here?

Dogmeat /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

See, I don't disagree that almost 100% of the time, this means they don't want you to bet. But that doesn't mean it's correct to bet 100% of the time you see it. That depends on the player doing it.

[UVaHoo]

One theory is that online, most people start out playing at the microstakes, which go all the way down to pennies at some sites.

Live, many places don't offer games lower than 3/6 or 4/8. Therefore, you're more likely to see beginners at 4/8 live who would be at the quarter tables online. As a result, play is worse at the same limit live than it is online.

Many of the other theories suggested here also are relevant, imo.

Having read all the posts so far brings to mind a question.I am one of the people several hundred miles away from a casino that offers card games. The only one that does is not a vacation spot frequented by a lot of tourists.( Harrahs in Topeka, Kansas). Anyone have an opinion on the differences in vacation destination casino play vs out-in the-middle-of-nowhere casino play.

[pudley4]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's almost universally accepted that online is harder than B&amp;M (at the same limits). One of the biggest reasons is the difference in the number of hands per hour. Online, you can get 60 hands/hour (at a full table; shorthanded tables can be around 100/hr). You can also multitable. So playing 4 tables you can get 240 hands/hour. In a B&amp;M cardroom, you'll maybe get 35 hands/hr. So you can play a lower limit online and still have the same win rate ($/hr) and have less variance.

[/ QUOTE ]

How, exactly, does either the number of hands per hour, or multitabling increase the variance, or make the game harder?

If you can play a specific limit with a certain win rate, playing more hands per hour does not lower your win rate - or am I missing something here?

Dogmeat /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Rereading my post, it's not clear what my argument was. What I'm trying to say is that a 2/4 game online is comparable in skill to a higher game live (10/20 or so). The reason is because the successful players at 10/20 live can come online and play a lower game, but because they can get more hands in, they're able to win just as much as they can when they play live. A side benefit is that this player will also have a smaller SD when playing online.

To clarify:

A player who is successful in B&amp;M playing 10/20 may make 1BB/hr with a SD of 12 BB ($20/hr, SD of $240).

Online that same player can play 4 tables of 2/4, and at 2BB/100 hands he'll make ($4 * 2BB/100 * 60 hand/hr * 4 tables )= $20/hr. His SD (taking a normal SD of 15 when measuring online in BB/100 and converting it to hrs using 250hands/hr) is about $100.

So we can see that our sample player can make the same amount of money online by playing a lower game, and he'll have a lower variance. So if you as a new player jump into a 2/4 game online, you could (should) be facing players with the skill to beat a much higher live game.

The only times where this doesn't hold true is where the live game has an artificial limit (such as Minnesota's max $60 bet). Here the 30/60 can theoretically be much tougher than online, since we have some players who play online even higher than that.