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It’s time. Time to push away from the computer and put all those hard-earned online poker skills to use in live poker.
Yes, live poker. It’s exactly like online, except here the fi sh can punch you in the face when you mouth off about their suckout.
It’s impossible to guess how many online poker players never have set foot inside a casino, but simple logic — considering how many people don’t live within driving distance of a legal casino — suggests it’s at least in the tens of thousands.
So what happens if you decide to take your luck in the virtual world over to our side of the matrix? Well, very good things, if Chris Moneymaker and the other virtual players who have found success in casinos are any indication. Or, very bad things, if the wannabe Moneymakers now living in their parents’ basements are another indication.
When it comes to online play versus live play, about the only things that are the same are the colors of the cards. Everything else — the speed, the environment, the fellow players — couldn’t be more different from one venue to the other. So if you’re an online whiz looking to make the jump to live play, we’ve got your back.
Start with your fi rst steps into a casino. Now, you know you have to be 21 in the States, right? It’s the law, and yet it still comes as a shock to the college hackers who’ve managed to parlay a semester’s meal money into a few Full Tilt wins. Once you hit 21, though, you’re free to be as stupid with your money as the rest of us.
So you’re in the door. You fi nd yourself a table, and it’s shuffl e up and deal, right? Not so fast, hotshot. Unlike online poker, there are limits to the number of poker tables you can fi t in a room, even in Vegas. The Bellagio has 40 tables, the Venetian 39, the Mirage 31. On weekends, especially at prime hours (10 p.m. to 2 a.m.), you’re looking at a potential hour-plus wait time.
Once a chair comes open, you’re on it, aren’t you? Again, hold up, friend. What happens if you get yourself seated at a table of casino regulars just looking for nervous little fi sh like yourself? You may be top dog at the online casino, but in the real world, you’re a pup until you prove otherwise.
And the best way to do that is to start by beating up on fellow newbies. Cardrunners.com player Keith Anderson recommends slipping the poker room manager a couple bucks to fi nd out where the easy marks are. As you’ll soon fi nd, tips are key in a live poker environment. Your laptop doesn’t care if you leave a couple extra bucks by the screen for good service, but a cocktail waitress sure will.
The basic rule of thumb for tipping is at least a couple bucks per drink, more if the waitress has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Tip well and you can count on good service all night; forget to tip and your waitress might just forget your drink for an hour or two.
One other reminder when dealing with waitresses: “Be sure to ask for a specifi c drink,” Anderson says. “If you want Grey Goose, ask for Grey Goose. Otherwise you never know what kind of cheap stuff you’re going to get.”
When you’re throwing out tips, it’s a really good idea not to forget the dealer. No, he (or she) won’t slide you Big Slick or toss out that perfect river card. But the dealer can make your entire experience at the table much more enjoyable. So toss him a couple big blinds after scooping a large pot, and you’ll have a much better time. Plus, karma is a regular at the tables.
And in instances where there’s a dispute, the dealer can be your best friend, if you’ve treated him well up to this point. “I have had a few decisions sway my way a few times that I honestly thought could go either way,” says Pakman Poon, a Cardrunners. com player with expertise both live and online. “How the dealer presents your situation to the fl oor manager can help your win rate signifi cantly. Think about a 300BB pot, and it’s up to the fl oorman as to who gets it. That’s your entire win rate sitting right there in the middle of the table. What’s a few more dollars for the dealer if you could sway the vote?”
As for strategy, you’ll need to remember one thing: Slooooow down. Think about it this way — fast-moving online tables can turn over up to 100 hands an hour; you can multiply that by your own multi-table prowess. But live games can rotate at a tenth of that speed, which means that if you’re looking to pile up win after win, you’re going to be climbing the walls waiting for the button to come back around.
“The ability to stay focused when nothing is going on is huge,” Poon says. “A lot of online guys who [multi-table] can’t handle the downtime. If they just stayed focused and watched the players, they could make much better plays [or] folds versus those live donks.”
You also need to be paying much closer attention to the players around you, for any number of reasons. “The biggest difference I see is the level of aggression drops signifi cantly in a low-limit live game,” Poon says. “Online guys make mistakes all the time interpreting actions taken by a live player. They often don’t realize live donks will only show true aggression with a much narrower range — 10-10, J-J, A-Q are just not in a regular live donk’s three-bet range.” In other words, if they come at you hard in a live game, chances are pretty good they’ve got the nuts, so beware.
Once the action gets rolling around the table, pay attention. You don’t have betting amounts and pot totals fl oating in the air in front of you; it’s up to you to keep up with that information. This becomes particularly important in most horse-race pots, particularly multi-way ones, where the online player’s tendency is to bet early and often, working the mouse button like Morse code. “It’s a lot easier to run up bets online than it is in a live game,” Anderson says. “It gets harder when you have to reach in and actually handle those chips.”
And in multi-way pots, you’d better be bringing some serious heat. “You get an online guy in a six-way pot, and he just bets, bets, bets like an ass,” Poon says. “Then he starts braying because he really expected people to fold and for his K-K to hold up. You can’t bring a precision weapon like A-A, K-K, A-K, [or other] one-pair hands and hope to win against an army.” Poon recommends either monster hands like fl opped sets or learning how to bluff multiple players with escalating bets.
The trick to casino bluffi ng, though, is to pay attention to your tablemates. It seems obvious, but it’s amazing how few online players actually pay attention to their fellow players when they’re not mocking them for allegedly stupid plays. Judging online betting patterns is tough; someone might be pausing before making a call not because he’s considering the circumstances, but because he ran to take a leak.
On the other hand, it’s tough to hide who you are at a table. “Physical reads can save you and get you more than ever possible versus online reads,” Poon says. “That’s how to make lesser hands worth more, with actual physical reads. Online guys sit down with no clue what to do when a guy starts bouncing up and down. They just think to themselves that this guy had too much coffee!”
Here’s the thing about casinos, though — they allow pretty much anybody in there. That means the odds of facing someone who knows what he’s doing at a table drops signifi cantly when you’re at a live table. “Playing at an online site if you’re in America means you’ve got to go through a number of steps,” Anderson says. “But at a casino, you might just wander in, you might be in town for a convention, and a good player can take advantage of those types of people.”
For all the advantages of online play — speed, multi-tabling, convenience — there’s nothing to compare with sitting around a table, hanging with a bunch of your fellow poker players, drinks and chatter fl owing. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a hard time clicking that mouse when there’s live play to be had. Just remember one last tip:
“Bring a lot of money,” Poon says. “Whatever you think you will need to play, double it. Play like a super rock until you fi gure out what you are doing.”
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