[LearnedfromTV]

Good article, Rizen.

One of the things that interests me most about the evolution of poker is the interaction between online and live play.

Obviously online play greatly sped up the overall learning curve, both because of the volume people play and the increased emphasis on quantitative analysis with statistical data and no live reads. The best online players are much farther along technically/quantitatively/mathematically than would have been possible without online play

Most interesting is how different low/mid limit live play is. Aggressive short-stack pushing and aggression in general is still looked at by a lot of exclusively live players, especially the fish in $500-$1000 buyin tournaments, as a weakness of online players. The $10k events probably track online evolution more closely, and everyone shoves a lot (albiet often horribly) in fast structured live tourneys, but a lot of live players who have had decent success in the mid levels have a completely different view of correct strategy. I think this is mostly because they play in weaker games and they don't have the proper sample size to analyze the aggression they think is bad play. I'm talking about completely standard stuff like threebet shoving AK, reraising hands other than AA-KK. Live cash games, (up to 5-10 at least) are also extremely loose-passive relative to online games, which creates a whole class of "good" players who are tight passive, yet win, and think the more aggressive play typical of online games is bad. I wonder how long it will take for the things online multitablers have learned playing 50k hands a month to fully seep into the live games, if it ever happens. Even if all the online pros quit online play and started playing full time live, it would take the broader group of live players years to play as many hands as could be played in one year online, so even if the evidence will eventually be out there in live results, it will take a while for everyone to realize what's happening. Maybe they never will, as long as the live poker economy gets enough money from old-school fish, old-school ideas will persist, because they can be more successful in that environment.

Also, completely aside, I'm curious what impact the Chen/Ankenmann book will eventually have. Because it doesn't provide tangible strategy advice in the way HArrington's M did, maybe it won't have much effect outside the brainy subset. I hope so.