Settling a debate, online vs. live skills

[damaniac]

A couple of friends and I had a disagreement over the likelihood of a player being mediocre online but excellent live, or vice versa.

Essentially, my friends claim that while someone could be mediocre online (mediocre could be read as a small loser to a small winner at a given level, perhaps), they could well be a top-notch player live at comparable levels (where comparable refers to the skill of the opponents and not the amount, so comparing 5/10 online with 15/30 live or whatever it most likely corresponds to). Their reasoning was that they could use tells that are unavailable to online player.

I countered that, while there are somewhat different skill-sets necessary in making reads online vs. live, behavior tells are only going to form a small part of that most of the time. Furthermore, if a player is mediocre at online poker, and thus probably either has a flawed understanding of some basic poker concepts, or just some bad leaks in his game, those are going to carry over into live poker, and you are basically not going to be able to make up more than a small fraction of your mistakes through tells.

However I'm mostly speculating on this as I've never really played above 5/10, and neither have they. So, to those of you who have put in many hours at both types of games, or just know more about this than me, who is right? What other factors might apply?

I would say that barring a superhuman ability to perfectly read all players hands , I don't see how a losing online player could be a "top notch" live player(especially in limit games).

However, against certain opponents I think that the presence of physical tells could make a break even/small losing player a small winner. But reading Caro's Book of Tells does not make you a great player all by itself.

Most aspects of getting a read on someone have to do with being able to speculate at how they are thinking about the game and understand that person's "strategy"; and if you can do that live , you should be able to do it online.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

It's possible they could be better live, but there is no such thing as a top notch player who plays bad.

Conversely though, those other players, the ones exhibiting the "tells" must be better playing on-line?

[damaniac]

I guess "top-notch" was probably too much. In retrospect I should have tried to clarify and quantitfy what they meant. But how about all of you, as a rough estimate in BB/100 or just a general description, how much better could someone be live than online?

I think the benefit of physical tells is vastly overrated. It's a misconception given to us by the anecdotal history of poker and movies like Rounders (although this isn't to say it's non-existent).

Consider that online, it is STILL possible to gain tells on your opponents, through speed of play, bet size, and other factors. As well, there is the added bonus of being able to take notes that your opponents don't know of. In a live game, if you took notes on your opponents during a hand, it wouldn't go unnoticed.

I don't think there is a significant difference between the two environments, except perhaps the quality of the players. This is likely where the true nature of your question lies.

[dogmeat]

FWIW, I played poker for a living for several years, and then on a semi-regular basis while working a regular job. Later, I game online poker a try, and while I won a little bit of money at my strongest game (7-stud), I got my head handed to me for over a month at hold'em. So, from the hold'em standpoint, I was a losing online player for thousands of hands.........while a reasonably good live player.

It took me several months to adjust to the online game, so IMHO, a player could be good at live play, and not good at online.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

[Matt Flynn]

Lot of winning live players I know do relatively poorly online.

Conversely, I know a few skilled online players who play worse live. After playing with a couple of them i sense a part of that is because of the relatively slow play compared to online play where they are usually multi-tabling, and they get bored and start playing less quality starting hands and taking risks they might not take online.

[CCovington]

I have heard alot of success stories about people going from online to live, and alot of "online poker is rigged" stories from people going from live to online. Take it as you will.