No Poker Psychology on Internet Games

[Raul Ramirez]

No Poker Psychology on Internet Games
I read on www.pokerpsychology.com that tells give your opponents away.
Seems to me that internet poker is much more difficult because you can read the tells of your opponents, but a friend of mine contradicted me by saying that you don’t need to se the face of the person next to you so that you can figured out their strategy… How is that?
[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Redhot_man]

LMAO. Betting patterns. Timing patterns. Sit enxt to be in a 6 handed shorthanded Nl game and ill teach you a thing or two about pyschology.

[Kenshin]

Many experts (I by no means consider myself one) contend that tell reading is vastly overrated in terms of profitability. You do not have to see person to engage in traditional hand reading (an extremely important skill)

[Al Schoonmaker]

The critical psychological information is NOT tells. I agree completely with those who state that tells are vastly over-rated. They are valuable, but people's STYLES are much more important.
Exactly the same bet has a fundamentally different meaning when it is made by a Maniac rather than a Rock, no matter what tells either gives out.
If you are willing to work very hard, you can actually learn MORE about players' styles online than you can live. Live you can easily be confused by contradictions from how people look and talk versus how they bet. Some players are very good at talking or appearing differently from the way they play.
Styles should be inferred from numerical data. How often does a person call, check, raise, reraise, etc. It is much easier to keep detailed notes online than it is to do so in live games. In addition, I believe Poker Tracker and other programs can help you. I have not used them myself, but may do so in the future.
A friend referred me to a thread on another forum (not 2+2) which said that there is NO psychology in online poker games, that the mathematical wizards were going to dominate the game. I did not reply because I'm a 2+2 author, but I wanted to say, "You're out of your mind."
Mason and David were the leaders in switching people from intuitive to EV based (i.e. mathematical) strategies. Mason has a masters in a math field, and David is a math genius. Yet both of them have repeatedly written about the importance of psychology, and they published TWO books on that subject on the same day, mine and John Feeney's "Inside the poker mind."
Psychology will always be a major factor in poker, no matter where it is played. However, as I wrote in my book,
"If Freud had played poker and ignored the odds and strategic principles, he would have gone broke. He was the greatest psychologist, but the odds and strategy come way ahead of psychology. To play winning poker, you must master and apply the odds and basic strategic concepts."
In other words, don't ignore psychology, but don't forget that you MUST play a solid, EV based strategy.
Regards,
Al

[Al_Capone_Junior]

I really miss the psychological aspects of the game when I am playing online. But they still exist, just in a smaller dimension. Because you are so often playing against a table of players you have never seen before (at least in many hold'em games on big sites), you won't know anything about them. However, you do play more hands, and pay less rake, so online you are actualy able to do as well or slightly better than you can live at the same stakes. If you keep good notes online, and play in higher games where the same players are there more frequently, psychology can start to have value again, but of course more of these frequent players will be fairly decent. It's with these regulars that aren't total fish that psychology has the most value online.

al

[JayKon]

Just for cookies, I decided to read the article. For what it's worth, most of it seems accurate. However, they seem to be talking mostly about telegraphs and playing styles, not tells.

While the difference is subtle, it is important.

Now understand that I personally view tells with more importance than most on this forum. However, I will still tell you to pay attention to playing style and betting patterns as tells become less reliable the more experienced your oponents are.

It's a subject worth knowing and it is worth money, just not that much.

Jay

[Jedi Poker]

Of course there's psychology on-line. For instance, commonsense psychology tells me that your post is spam and that your real name is Maryann Guberman not Raul Ramirez. And since you work at Gambler's Book Club, chances are Howard Scwhartz has ordered you to make this spam of a post. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] Tell Howard Yoda says Hi. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]