People who need people

It is the start of a popular song but the following also applies…

The first two lines in Doyle Brunson’s seminal book on poker are: Poker is a game of people. That is the most important lesson you should learn from my book. That first sentence summarizes a big, thick book in six words.

If you play your home game, you see the same faces every week and know how and what they play. If you hit the Bricks and Mortar, you’ll also see the same faces in many games. When we go online we see things like 25,532 players are online and the people aspect comes apart. Sometimes a ‘friends list’ will let you locate a few players but in tournaments – even with good notes – you may not see a ‘familiar face’ for the whole tournament.

This is a big difference. Brunson has also said that he played online to try to get a handle on the play that he was seeing from online players in the big tournaments he plays. The situation seems to be that poker was no longer a game of people.

Well, the answer, if there is one, seems to be that you have to play the cards you’ve been dealt more. Brunson used a lot of naked aggression at times. Those bluffs don’t work as well online. The reads you have online aren’t the normal tell. Those moves on a danger flop often get a different reaction from his expectations. Donkey moves are more prevalent online — as online players show down far more bluffs against you. Your reads may come down to marking the player a believer or disbeliever. The bluff works as well as it did but only against a certain class of tight player. And often the passive ones will fool you.

The result is you need far better cards to have resounding success. Your betting will be wrong more with the loss potential larger. Getting all in with the best hand means more frequent callers and that means the suckout potential is greater.

There is no ‘doom switch’ or ‘Action Random Number Fix’ in online poker. It is just a different game that plays on the knife edge. You must be philosophical and expect greater variance. The old saw about online ’seeing more hands per hour’ is only a part of the answer. Strong raises are seen by a wider variety of hands making reads more difficult. One’s betting the nuts is seen as a standard continuation bet by many eyes.

In the course of tournament play and with the added options provided in ring sessions, you must think position and playing drawing hands more. Only in Sit and Go play can a strictly tight-aggressive game succeed and then it is less than in the past. Expect more stack damage and try to play around the problem.

I suppose at this point – having gone on about the difference – I should provide everyone that managed to read this far some brilliant insight that puts it all in perspective that will allows us all to soar to new heights. Well, that is out the window. I struggle along, like most folks, while trying to do all the things the books like SS2 say. Sometimes it works; mostly it don’t…

ADDENDUM:

Here is something that might help you figure out ‘people’ that works at FullTilt in the beta being offered. It is a data miner. It searches the table and grades players. There’s also a pay version that works on Party but that’s out for those in the ‘new world’…

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 6:58 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Thoughts, Tournaments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.