Interesting conversation from Cardplayer

[Charlie Kase]

I found this on the Cardplayer forums today:

Posted by Blank
Topic: am i the only one here who doesn't play online poker?

(original post) Blank:"never tried, and don't plan on it. i've heard too many horror stories of 10 hours of play and thousands lost. i've also heard scary tales of rigging and legal issues. either way i know me, and im not to be trusted gambling hundreds of dollars just a click away. the 30min drive to my favorite cardroom is the deterrent i need for me not to play too much, lol jp.

but really, online poker just takes away so much from the game. you can't read people, you can't get a feeling for the vibes their giving off, you can't give off fake tells/signals, hollywood is near impossible, the human interaction, the feel of real cards, real shuffling, real chips, a real dealer, and so much more. i'd say it cuts poker down to a game of math and probablilities, with the rest at the mercy of luck.

i don't know. and ive always been skeptical of giving out important information on the internet.

blank"


After a few responses Mossfactor wrote the following:

"Sklansky said it best when he stated (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Poker is about one thing: making money." So essentially when you're playing poker, you are out to make as much money as possible. Every decesion you make, from preflop play, to postflop play, to game selection, to what stakes you play, to what venue you play is about maximizing your expectation. Expectation can come in many forms, and it's not just about playing perfect poker. Online poker simply has a higher expectation than B&M poker.

This expectation comes in many forms: Better games, more hands, multitabling, lower rake, and lack of "hidden costs."

There are better games in that you have a much wider selection of games with worse players even in mid stakes games. This can lead to HUGE increases in expectation. Also you have the option of a much larger variety of games, including lots of low limit games that most casinos don't offer. Plus the high stakes games are often filled, at least much more regularly that at casinos.

More hands means exactly what it states-- you're getting more hands in the same amount of time, which means you're playing more pots within the same block and winning more money. The effect of this can be staggering. Say you play 20% more hands per hour online (Which is being generous towards the BM sympathizers, since it's most likely more than that). If you make 2BB/100 hands, and you get in 100 hands in a 6 hour session. Take that same 6 hour session, and increase the hand size by 20%, you're increasing your profits by 20% to 2.2BB/100 hands. This is a very strong increase in your expectation. Who gets a 20% raise at work in any job in any field? Nobody!

Multitabling is a technique that is unique to online poker. When you multitable you can play slightly lower stakes, but play more than one table, reducing your variance and increasing your expectation. What a great deal! Say you're able to make 2BB/100 hands at a $5/10 game, and you can make 2.5BB/100 hands at a $3/6 game. You're making $5 more per 100 hands at $5/10, however, if you mutlitable two $3/6 games, you're making 5BB/100 hands total, for an increased profit of $10. While this doesn't sound like much, that's a 50% increase in profit! That is UNREAL! You don't even have to lower stakes. Lets say you can make 2BB/100 hands at $5/10 playing one table, with multitabling you may lose out on .5BB/100 hands due to random misclicks, or just not having good reads on your competition, distractions, etc etc. However if you play two games with .5BB less expectation per 100 hands at each table, you're still making 3BB/100 hands, another increase of FIFTY PERCENT in your profit! The increased profit is compounded by the increased number of hands played per hour. The effects of these two combined strenghts that online poker has to your expectation is staggering.

Lowered rake is what brings a lot of people to online poker, and for good reason. I don't know what it's like in Vegas, but my local cardroom (and I use "local" loosely, it's about a 2 hour drive) charges 10%, up to $5 in all their games. In a $3/6 game that's almost an entire BB in a 9BB pot! That loss in expectation is insane! By cutting that in half, you can make up to 3-4 MORE BBs an hour at $3/6. In $5/10 it's only the size of a small bet, however this adds up very quickly. You're at least losing an extra 2 or three BBs a session by paying rake that high. Plus it discourages people to call down with megar holdings in small pots against you, allowing you to get payed off more. In that regard the lower rake increases your profits in subtle ways. In addition, you do not have to toke the dealer, since the dealer is just a graphic, and graphics don't need money. This is just more expectation for you.

"Hidden costs" are things you don't even realize you're paying for. Gas to drive to the casino. Dinner, lunch, something to drink-- if you don't get comped you're paying more than the supermarket charges. Plus time, time away from home and your family. You have to set aside time to play poker, you can't just start playing whenever you feel like it, it's got to be a planned decesion. Also all the time you spend driving to the casino, and, due to less hands dealt per hour, the time you spend waiting for people's hands to complete, for the dealer to shuffel the cards, is all time you're wasting. Wasted time is bad not just from an expectation standpoint, but from a living your life standpoint. I can get the same work done in much less time online, and thus I have more time to live my life. That's maybe the most inspirational thing I've said in the past 30 minutes.

The only reason I could see not to play online is if it were rigged. Obviously the millions who play online everyday are not getting scammed. Many of the bigger sites have had their random number generators audited by 3rd parties and approved by other various organizations. The only times I've heard people complain about sites being rigged are when they're losing money. I've not heard of ONE person who is making thousands of dollars online and is complaining about it being rigged. Honestly, even if it was rigged, I make so much MORE expectation playing online, I'd probably still do it!

Choosing to ignore the insane increases in expectation that online play provides is and always will be a mystery to me."


To which Blank responded:

"Good points all around Moss. But then again, was poker meant to be played with a mouse and a computer screen?

I mean, to be honest with you, online play simply takes away from the aesthetic and philosophical qualities that define poker. sure you might argue that the ultimate goal of poker is money. but i would disagree. maybe for some it has become that, but for most, and for those who first started playing the game in france*, it was more of a game of recreation with the added excitement of money play. i don't think the game was designed to be played professionaly/for a living (though it has become that to great success), it doesn't change the fact that poker is a game, and arguably a sport, and therefore its main purpose is recreation acheived through its inherent qualities/beauties and of course the incentive of winning money.

Concertedly, and to further stregthen my arguement, lets take a game like chess for example. much like poker in that is a game of the mind and not the body (though without the luck factor) and also like poker it can be played for money or without. Could you make the arguement that Chess is a game about money? I think the answer is an obvious no. Furthermore, we could mention a sport, say basketball. Basketball too can bring many people fortunes, but could you argue that basketball is then inherently a game played for money? I would again confidently say no. It would seem clear to me that a vast majority play basketball simply for recreational value due to the entertaining nature of the game, just like poker. Sure the majority of those who play poker play with money, but say you guaranteed that they would lose 60% of the time they played, would they still play? Just for the fun of it? I'm confident most common players would say yes. I would (but for smaller stakes of course [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]).

* = Poker was first played in France, then known as Poque. The rumors that it was created in Arabia are categorically false. A more in-depth reference to a credible source would confirm that. Furthermore, the first card-game in the world was played in China, and has now evolved into the well-known Mah-Jong (which is actually fairly similar to Poker)."


Mossfactor then replied:

"I know exactly where you're coming from. Whenever one of my brothers or neighbours wants to play poker, I always take them up on the offer. Even though they're usually playing small (10-15 person) NL tournaments with a $5-$10 buyin, I do it because that's usually the most fun I have playing poker, and it keeps me loving the game. I do agree that the skill in poker is at it's highest in real life and that for a true test of one's skill the venue must be BM.

However, every single time you play, it is not for the novelty of it. On the whole, in fact the vast majority of the time that I play poker (and I'm not alone by a longshot), it is to make money. Plain and simple. In fact if you play even once or twice a week you're more than likely playing to make money, especially if it's any kind of decent stakes. When you are playing to make money, not necessarily professionally, you need to maximize your expectation. It's simple common sense.

As far as the analogies to other games where money is made, the correlation is not exactly correct. The whole premise of poker deals with money. The game was designed as one that uses money to bet with, and the whole structure of the game is dependant on the fact that it is played for money. If you take a pickup basketball game, those players play with the exact same drive and passion as players in the NBA-- often times with MORE passion. If you take a game of poker for play money or no money and compare it to a game of poker for any kind of money value on it, you see the play change DRASTICALLY. The money in the game is what makes it poker. You cannot bluff if there is no money involved. It's an entirely different game altogether with no money on the line. Sit down at any online penny game and compare it with a play money game. Even with the smallest amount of money on the line possible, players are SIGNIFICANTLY more serious about their play than with no money on the line. The point is, poker is gambling, and money is what drives gambling. If there is no money on the line the game isn't even the same. This effect isn't seen in any other game.

While poker is more fun played in person, and perhaps that's the way it's meant to be played, in the end it comes down to making money. Poker is fun, but it's more fun when you win. And if you're going to be winning, why not make the most while you're at it?"

blank has yet to respond again.

I personally agree with blank on this. I too don't play online poker and agree that it just takes away too much from the game.

Here's the link by the way:
http://forums.cardplayer.com/viewtopic.php?t=2342
-Kase

[B1GF1SHY]

While poker is much more fun live, in the end, it really is about the money. So unless you're just playing poker to have fun, you're missing out by not playing online. Online poker takes away some stuff, but it overcompensates with the money.

[Wayfare]

You can continue believing that playing online poker takes away from the game, and I can continue to toss my thousands of dollars won in much less time into the air.

B+M is more fun, but it's such a goddamn hassle! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[etizzle]

If your goal is mostly to make money, not playing online is insane. The number of hands/hr alone more than makes up for any other issue.