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Are live poker players better than online players?

December 9th, 2009

My 50 cents on the raging debate on the matter of skills in live poker games versus online games.

The oldtimers often see online players as inexperienced and naive. The new breed of online players often see the oldtimers as, well you guessed it, old.

I actually think that both sides are right!

How can that be? Let me explain…

In general I believe that the good online players are better at analysing the game and have a more thorough understanding of the mathematics of poker.

And in general I believe the oldtimers have a keener sense for characteristics of different players and “feel” for how they are going to play.

On the matter of experience I actually think that it is not uncommon that a 23 year old online poker wiz kid has as much poker under his belt as a 60 year old vet.

If you started playing online at the age of 18 and have been playing 4 tables 10 hours per day a couple of years - at at least double the pace of a live game you will actually gather a lot of experience fast.

In general I believe the oldtimers underestimate the skill of analysis and mathematics.

In general I believe the online players underestimate the skill of reading tells.

I actually even believe many of the oldtimers underestimate the skill of reading tells themselves.

When you read for example Harrington on Hold ‘em Expert Strategy or Gus Hansen’s Every Hand Revealed or Warwick Dunnet’s Poker Wizards most of the pros say that tells are a very small part of their game.

But I believe they are wrong.

Sure, when it comes to situations where they can say “I know he had pocket 7’s, I could just feel it” I agree that it is very rare.

But I do believe that they can often get a sense of strength or weakness or a bluff.

The reason I think they underestimate the skill is that all of us underestimate the power of the subconscious.

The power of “gutfeeling”, female intuition and such is very strong. There are so many things going on under the surface that never reaches the conscious parts of the brain.

If you don’t believe me you should read the great book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking about intuition (not a poker book).

Now, when I talk about the ability to read tells, I am not mainly referring to “when he put’s the money in the pot like that he has a strong hand” kind of read. I would agree that those kind of reads are fairly rare. I am talking about the feeling you get that something is a certain way, but you can’t really put your finger on it. It is just a feeling. You can’t explain it, and you can’t teach it to someone else. Why? Because you don’t know yourself how you do it! In Blink there is an example of the examination of a supposedly old greek statue. All the physical testing shows that it should be the real deal. But the experts were united, something was wrong with it. They just couldn’t figure out what. After a while it turned out, if I remember correctly, that it was something with the proportions that were slightly off. And after a while they were able to prove it physically also.

Another reason I believe intuition and tells are truly important part of the great live players game is that when you read most of the really good live players analysis of hands they are not too impressive.

Most of them are doing decent or good analysis. The only exception that I’ve seen so far is Harrington who is really impressive. But most other great live players are not doing mindblowing poker analysis.

I still think most of them are not just lucky, they are great players. I believe a combination of good analysis skills together with outstanding “reading” skills can take you very far in live games.

An excellent example is Mike “the mouth” Matusow who has lost tremendous amounts in online poker. If I remember correctly he has said that he has never had a winning month online! And his analysis and plays sometimes feels kind of weird. I believe he is a bad online player but a great live player. He seems to have excellent feel for when he can get away with a crazy bluff and he seems capable of manipulating people to do what he want. But he is not able to do that online, so he is loosing there.

So why then are online players better at analysis and mathematics? Because of the use of online tools like Pokertracker and Pokerstove. 20 hours with tools like those might give you more information and more accurate information than 30 years of speculation with your peers.

To conclude I think both sides of specialists have a lot to learn from each other!

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Is online poker rigged and do you believe in UFO’s?

December 5th, 2009

I get a lot of questions and discussion on the topic of rigged online poker.

So I am going to share what I believe here.

I just read that they are closing down the UFO departement at Military Defense in Great Britain. They don’t express an opinion on whether UFO’s exist or not - but in the 50 years that they have had this department, they have not encountered one threat to the national security. So now they don’t see a need for that special branch anymore.

Every year a vast amount of people all around the globe files reports on UFO encounters. But have we yet seen any verified encounters? Yes, there are a couple of reports and photographs that seem strange and difficult to explain, but almost all of them are explainable and a lot of them are bluffs.

So do I believe online poker is rigged? In general my answer would be no, I don’t believe that any of the major rooms is rigged. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if some of the small rooms are, but for the big players I think the risk/reward is far too bad for trying something like that.

Most importantly I believe that the lack of evidence is revealing. If online poker was so rigged that so many people believe why isn’t there more evidence? Like hand histories over 100’s of thousands of hands that might actually show something? Interesting is also that most of the players who so strongly believe poker is rigged are casual players who might not even have played 10 thousand hands in their lifetime. But how you can draw conclusions from such a small sample? The fact of the matter is that you can’t.

For more on the subject, check out Bill Rini’s (former Poker Room Manager at Party Poker) interesting article Why Online Poker Is Not Rigged.

How about cheating in online poker then? That is a different matter, more on that in later posts…

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Skill or luck in poker? Part 1

November 29th, 2009

Is poker mainly a game of skill or a game of luck?

The question is a hot topic in several countries in the world right now. In Sweden there are ongoing trials that will depend on input from the experts. In an interesting article in Aftonbladet Dan Glimne refers to “Statistical Analysis of Texas Hold’em“ by Sean McCullochwhich who has studied 100 million played hands in cash games with blinds of $1 and up.

Some of the conclusions are that 25 % of the hands went to showdown. In these showdowns the best starting hand won 50 % of the time.
So the best starting hand is only winning through showdown 12,5 % of them time! Furthermore somenone is winning the 75 % of hands that never went to showdown. Through skill, luck or aggression?

What do you think?

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Gus Hansen down $2,9 million - bad luck or lousy play?

September 27th, 2009

Aftonbladet is writing about Gus Hansen’s massive online losses: down $2,9 million this year online.
It is a lot of money - even for a world class player like Gus.

So what does it mean, is this going to be the end of a great poker player? Honestly, I am not too worried about his financial situation. But I am sure he feels it.
But what about the quality of his play? Is it just bad luck, or is he not as good anymore?

Out of curiosity I took a look at Pokertable Ratings and they have tracked him for 10 000 cash game hands with a loss of $ 1 million.
So if he’s loosing that on only 10 000 hands I would say that on the levels he is playing you might loose $ 3 million on purely bad luck. Normally I would say you would need at least 50 000 hands to get a decent feel for winrate.
An interesting thing to note about his stats is that he is tighter and more passive than average. Maybe he is trying a new style?

But that said I believe Gus main strengths are live tournaments.

Tags: gus, hansen
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