I didn't say "do play great," I said "can play great" live because online's such a great crash course for live play where live play isn't for online play.

Everyone everywhere can crash and burn anywhere.

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I would say live is definetly detrimental to online play and vice versa. Yes it's a crash course, but it teaches you to disregard certain information that is available live.

Online
A - the way you play, tight aggressive yada yada yada. I'll say contributes 75% of a winning player

B - reading hands pattern recognition and so on, contributes 25% of a winning player

C tells psychology and such, contributes >1%

Live

A - the way you play, tight aggressive yada yada yada. contributes 60% of a winning player

B - reading hands pattern recognition and so on, contributes 20-25% of a winning player

C tells psychology and such, contributes 15-20%

Online it's just A and B, live you need to have C and it also can overcome some deficiencies in A and B, online if you have deficiencies you are in trouble.

They really are as different as Stud and Hold' em, when you think about it.

I play with more fear online because I don't have my reads to fall back on. My live game is based on reading hands , tight aggressive play and so on. But, I have my people reading skills to fall back on. Online I don't.

Example - I raise with TT on the button and the BB calls, he's a loose passive player you have played against many times. Online your range of hands is 169 choices. Live I can narrow it down so much by the manner in which he called and any other tells/telegraphs I have picked up on him.

I will still rely on my loose/passive classification but now my read enhances that so much more. I'm so much more comfortable live in these situations

Finally, can I chit chat this guy during the hand? I can't tell you how many check-raises I have avoided, free cards i have recieved, and bluff opprtunities I have capatilized on by some mannerism I noticed.

Just my thoughts, like I said they really are different games

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I find it interesting that there seems to be a tendency here to completely seperate the "bet" from the "person". In an online game you re dealing with less information and on top of that, as mentioned, typically folks are employing "help" in the form of secondary programs.

That is not poker in my eyes.

Are you familiar with Poker Tracker (PT)? It's a neccessity online with tens of thousands of different players. At the casino, I have faces to associate with playing styles, but if there were this many people in an out of my games at the casino, I'd have some problems.

PT just keeps stats on people so you have their history available to help interpret your bets.

I don't know about your "That is not poker in my eyes" statement. I'll say it again- poker's about money, not Oreos, gangster run card rooms, fake designer shirts, and maintaining a poker face.

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You highlight my point right here. There is not enough information in an online game for you to play well because of the nature of the game itself.

I disagree. Poker is about more than "money". For one, it can be about competition, mastery and the satisfaction one recieves when they have outwitted someone. You can also play poker for social reasons I won't discuss here.

I think Hellmuth said it best, when he said,

"Poker is not a card game played by people, but a people game played with cards."

You admit to this when you say you can't possibly remember individual's betting patterns and have to use a computer to help you track players. That is because of the anonymity presented by online poker.

1.) You're picking out of what I'm saying whatever proves your point which you still haven't presented. Everything you've said relates to the online game. You make no points yet a ton of reptitive counterpoints. It's your thread, but who's working off of whom here?

2.) You're taking poker out of "online poker," but not defining poker. Can you do this without using anything I've said? I probably should've asked you to do this in my first post.

3.)
There is enough information to play well and that's how people make money.

4.)
Not to me. I'll agree with the mastery part as a hobby, but the "satisfaction one recieves when they have outwitted someone" loses value when you play so much.

5.) I have a feeling you're leading to the cliche of poker being about bluffing.

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Poker is winning money by outplaying your opposition in the longrun.

Now, however you do this is inconsequential. Remember the line in Silence of the Lambs?

Hannibal: "What is his principle, the main goal he acheives?"

Clarice: "He kills women"

Hannibal: "NO!, He covets"

You may think you are playing for mastery, competition whatever, but to accomplish this you must meet your main goal, winning money. mastery, competition, whatever, are just neccassary byproducts of your main goal. Just as Buffalo Bill killing the women was a neccassary byproduct of his main goal, coveting their skin.

at times it may appear that you are reading a tell but it's only a byproduct of your goal to outplay your opponents. Some people need tells and other psychological edges to outplay their competition, others don't. But Alex is correct, the main goal is to win money, how you do it is your own business.

Certain skills work better online, others work better live.

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2). Poker has 4 idenitifiable qualities: 5 or 7 cards, vying (vying means that the best hand may not always be the winning hand), lexically ordered hands, and a pot. So any game with these qualities can suffieciently be considered poker. These are minimums, mind you. Without anyone, it would be a different game.

For example, if you did not have vying, or 5 to 7 cards for that matter, you would simply have a game like blackjack. Where a mathematical algorithm "can" make you a profit.

5) Let me ask you this, would poker still be poker without bluffing? Well, no. Because then the concept of vying would not hold true. In order to successfully vye for a hand, one MUST at least be able to decieve his opponent. So how can you even suggest that bluffing is not an essential component of the game?

So the question becomes, is betting alone a neccesary component of bluffing? No it is not. There are limitations to betting as bluffing. For example, one cannot "sustain" a bet throughout the hand, or over the course of several hands. It is a one shot deal. By contrast, one's demeanor can satisfy both of these conditions. Remember that poker is a socially engineered game, invovling complex person to person interaction.

Online poker is "incomplete" in the spirit of what poker was historically and what it is today at a live table.

Your bet.

I disagree because your logic can just as easily be reversed. Indeed I could suggest that althought it may seem like money is your end goal, "winning" is paramount. Is this not the essence of a gambler? One you would risk it all, not for profit (because the bet may in fact be small), but because of the pleasure of, even the thrill, of the chase? Of the win?

Lets imagine someone who already HAS money, is rich for that matter. Lets imagine we are sitting in a ring game with Bill Gates (chuckle here). Do you think Bill cares about winning a $5000 dollar pot at his local casino? Or do you think it is more reasonable to assume that he infact plays, not for profit, but for the social element, or even for just competition. Point being, what would be the motivation to play for someone that already has money?

I am not saying money cannot be one's motivation, all I am suggesting is that it is not the end all be all of a poker game.

you could win more pots than anyone else and still lose money. Poker is not about winning, it is about winning money. you keep score in poker by how much money you win, not how many pots you've won.

I've used this analogy before, imagine if instead of win loss record, baseball was played for run differential. It would drastically change the game. winning by 1 run would be insignificant, where playing for win loss record makes it as good as winning by 20.

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