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Online Texas Holdem thoughts

Live poker was stale. And that’s what I remembered the first time I played it, but then it was just the air that was stale. It was a coalescence of cheap cologne, cheap cigars, and unwashed clothes on unwashed bodies. It hung over the room a thick, invisible cloud, one stale, thick, cloud of grime that you could almost feel. Just as one bad odor would dissipate another would take its place. Eventually, the nose would turn them off, a bit like a factory worker whose ears learned to tune out the roar of machinery because it never stopped.
The first day I walked into that place to play Texas Holdem the scents were overpowering, the yellowed wall paper stained by them repelled me, but their source, the hunched over degenerates playing on days long benders intrigued me. There was electricity about the place as large sums of money were passed about the table with relative nonchalance. I never felt that energy again, sadly, until I discovered Online Texas Holdem one night after I left the club early, I say left, but it was more like fled.
Before that, I had become a regular in the game. Eventually, as I played more, I only took notice of the odor when I’d come home to shower and it hung on my clothes. It was only when I’d disrobe the scent would batter me unprepared for such astringency juxtaposed against the cleanliness of my apartment. Sure playing poker in a room that lived and breathed seedy underbelly of New York City, quite literally, had its appeal. As I became immersed in the game, the crackle of the electricity became ordinary, and the unfamiliar became familiar.
The denizens of that dungeon poker club came from all walks of life and it was fun to feel the rush of rubbing elbows with characters I’d never meet otherwise, but eventually the filth that clung to me wasn’t just their foul odors but also their foul behaviors. Their language spilled into my conversations, their worldviews started to make sense. I only realized this once I had given up the club. I never returned to live poker, because online Texas Holdem gave me what I was truly looking for. At first, I had found the allure of playing poker with scallywags and rogues to be a romantic and exciting, later I saw it for what it really was I was playing with angle-shooters, cheaters, and generally bad people.
In online Texas Holdem it doesn’t matter what your opponent smells like, for he, like you is tethered to the table by an Internet connection. It doesn’t matter what he looks like, what he sounds like, or how much he’s had to drink. At their worst, they can simply be dismissed by ignoring their chat, at their best they are fools rushing to give you their chips.
In live poker, I learned about angle shooters and protecting my chips, and watching for teams. The nicer the folks the more likely they were up to no good. The people that were up front about their malfeasance oddly were the least likely to cheat you. Sadly, in retrospect I see that after playing there for a while, their habits started to creep into my identity. I would slow-roll the scumbags because they were scumbags who slow rolled the other scumbags. In online Texas Holdem I couldn’t become a scumbag. There is no button for a slow-roll.
Perhaps, my live poker club was the exception, perhaps, the level of the stakes or the neighborhood determined the decency of the players, though it was my experience the better dressed the man the slimier he was. On the night, that sent me forever to online Texas Holdem, one of the players at my table accused two others of passing signals and playing together. I had suspected as much but not been caught up in any big pots with them. Perhaps, they figured me too shrewd to cheat.
Their mark seemed a streetwise hustler, who had the swagger of a pimp, but dressed like an accountant. I later found out he was an ambulance chaser, but unlike in the courtroom, in the club he didn’t disguise his language he spoke like the hood he was from. He figured out they were cheating him and brandished a pistol. They both brandished theirs and the games ended. We all made for the one exit like rats during a flood. I left a couple grand on the table, so was one of the first ones out. A few blocks away catching my breath, I thought about going back there to retrieve my money. I didn’t.
I went home, fired up on an online poker site, and now I play in the safety of my own home. It doesn’t matter that no shots were fired, and there was more bluff and bluster then action. I’ll never forget that odor of thick, stale air but I know I’ll also never smell it again.

The difficulties inherent in online poker

There are many differences between online poker and live card room poker, some are obvious and some are not so obvious. But before I continue then I need to point something out that is blindly obvious and this is that online poker is played electronically. This is so obvious that its true depth is hidden from the vast majority of people who play poker. Some years ago when poker first started online then it was far closer back then to being an accurate representation of live poker in terms of strategy. While it has always been true that tells are far different online than live, it was still closer to being like live poker than it is today.

So what exactly has changed over the past ten years? Well to put it quite simply the game has undergone a sort of technological revolution and players these days are playing their online poker technologically. This basically means that even the very best players of ten years ago would not be able to compete at even the middle limits online these days. This isn’t because the players of today are emotionally better or more intelligent than the players of yesterday, but they are far more educated in the ways of online poker.

They are versed in game theory, the use of tracking software and they are far more mathematically profound than the players of a few years ago. When I first started playing online poker back in 2000 then I would barely be classed as no more than an intermediate level player today at best. You simply didn’t need to have that much of a game back then. But numerous companies produced sophisticated software like PokerTracker, SNGWIZ, SpadeEye and all of the rest and these allowed players to analyse their opponents in ways that would never have been possible a few years earlier.

In fact novice players who go online have something of a problem because they do not know or are aware of what is going on. They would never be aware that games that they may go on may have players that had data mined them. This means that their opponents or some of their opponents may know exactly how they play before they even encounter them on the tables. Trust me when I say that some very big names in the poker world have lost highly significant sums of money online by not recognising the key differences in the two forms of poker.

I am aware of numerous big named live game players who have lost serious seven figure amounts online. In live game play then these players would be fearsome and ferocious competitors but online you have to play by completely different rules. Another factor why many successful live game players fail online is that the maximum buy-ins are smaller and so they cannot use the fear factor in the same way that they can in ultra deep stacked live games.

How accurate is accurate?

There are basically two types of punters who gamble, those who know the accuracy of the quoted prices and those who don’t. This may seem to be an overly simplistic statement but it is based on reality. The ignorant basically have no idea of how accurate the market is overall. But even when you are aware of this, even when you are aware of how professional odds compilers operate, even when you are aware of how much professional money affects sporting markets…..the bottom line is that they are not accurate all the time.

If they were then many 150/1 shots wouldn’t be 150/1 shots when they happen to win. Take Shaun Murphy for example, he was 150/1 before the start of the 2005 World Snooker Championships, not only did he win that event but he also went on to prove that this was no fluke and is currently number three in the world ranking in 2009.

This was obviously something that the market missed at that time. Sometimes a 150/1 shot can win and it can be very fortunate. This can happen in events like horse racing for example. You have to remember that a horse that is 150/1 is really only that price because of the existence of maybe one or two far superior horses in the same race. If you could eliminate the odds on favourite and maybe the short priced second favourite then this 150/1 shot would not be that price against the rest of the field.

But what if the favourite fell or unknowingly was lame and the second favourite also was on the receiving end of an unfortunate incident and suddenly the 150/1 shots chances of winning have quantum leaped. Then when you factor in how favourites can get blocked out in the run in or on the corners then its easy to see how 150/1 shots can sneak in.

These are events that are out of our control or our ability to be able to predict. With Snooker its different as an 150/1 shot who wins the world title and goes on to become world ranked number three obviously should have been a far shorter price. Speaking of 150/1 shots, this was the price for Greece before Euro 2004.

On reflection, if more was known about the Greek set up, their players and the relative ability of their German coach and the sheer effectiveness of his tactics then Greece would not have started as virtual 150/1 no hopers! These are just two instances out of many where the market and the mass accumulative opinion got it badly wrong.

There are numerous examples that I could quote. I also often hear how the betting exchanges are the most accurate tissue there is. This is true but yet I have encountered many people who thought that punting on the exchanges was a waste of time because of this supposed accuracy.

The prices on the betting exchanges are generalised prices and these prices fluctuate based on certain criteria of supply and demand. Information and news also drives prices and relevant news that moves a price indicates that the previous price level was only at that level based on the available news at that time. It also means that the old price wasn’t accurate either.

So if the old price wasn’t accurate then how do we know that the new price is? Do you see where I am coming from here? So the bottom line is that you can get an edge against the bookmakers and the exchanges because they are not accurate all of the time and that is the key word….. “all”.

This article was produced by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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