[engineer_mba]

Hi All,

After several months (and many thousand hands), I began playing at a local casino (Bicycle Club) a few weeks ago. I am stil by no means an expert, but I have made several observations that I would love to get feedback on.

Observation #1.
There are some REALLY, REALLY, BAD players live. There have been people who did not even know the hand ranks (ie Full house beats Flush or big full beats small full). At the lower limits, at least half the table obviously doesn't understand the simplest bit of strategy.

Observation #2
There are much less sharks. When I play online, I expect there to be 2-5 good players who can consistently beat the game at any given table. I accept this, and figure I will split the profit from the bad players with them. Live, this is not the case. I have never been at a table where more than 2 people were concurrently, constistently increasing their stacksize for a prolonged period of time. My hypothesis is that online, good players will often multi-table games that are far too easy for them because they can easily turn a profit. Live, this isn't the case since each person is only playing one table. (Any thoughts on this???)


Observation #3
The rake is MUCH higher. Seriously, I was shocked when I first started playing in person. At my local casino in a $1/$2 game, the house rakes $2 and puts $0.50 in a jackpot bonus. IF you tip the dealer $0.50 when you win, you are basically just raking off the blinds every hand. If there are 33 hands dealt per hour, then $100 is leaving the table each hour which is a pretty big deal when total table buy in is $180 (9 players at $20 per person)!


Observation #4
There are many aspects of the live game that I really suck that I did not learn playing online. I am still a rookie at counting chips in the pot, I am still working out my technique for how to look at my cards. I am still not very good at picking up tells, and I am fairly confident that I am giving some off. Additionally, I don't know the house rules behind changing seats or the typical player courtesies. I was really shocked at how much there was going on that I took for granted playing online.



In closing, I would love to hear other people's thoughts on these observations. Have other people noticed any similar or different things when they transitioned to live play? Also, I would love to hear if people think it is easier or harder to earn money playing live? My initial idea is that playing in person the game is easier; however, the per hour earnings would merely be about the same due to other factors including waiting for a table, less hands per hour, and possible travel time.

Cheers,

Leo