[joel2006]

Many of the posters here seem not to understand/underestimate the big differences between playing live and online. It isn't just about specific tells, there are lots of general tells as well. Live it is much easier for a player who reads well to fold KK or QQ preflop than online, and easier to pick off bluffs. It is much, much easier to bluff online, than live against someone who reads well, especially if you don't have a lot of experience live (since you don't know what the other player is looking for, it's hard to know what behavior to hide.) Also PLO (like 7CS)provides more opportunities for reads than NLHE, which provides more than say LHE. I'll give one specific example, there is a general tell (familiar to players of 7CS or PLO) that maybe 95% of players exhibit when drawing to a Str8. This tell cannot exist online (even if the opponent could see you) because of the proximity of your hole cards to the board, but live it is VERY noticeable to a perceptive player. If you don't know the tell exists, then it's impossible to take counteraction, and even if you do, it requires great discipline not to exhibit it. PLO is a game where Str8s are huge (much more so than NLHE) since there are types of Str8 draws (like wraps) that don't exist in NLHE, and you draw to them so much more often, so the chance to pick up the tell exists on maybe 75% of the hands, and make it possible for a perceptive player to make a very big laydown like folding the second nuts (or bluff if they think you missed) with great confidence. If a player doesn't re-order his hand this tell is almost impossible to avoid, but even if he does, that in itself provides more info (skillful Gin Players will recognize this), for instance if a PLO player re-orders his hole cards it is often possible to know when he is drawing to (or more importantly, backdoors) a Wheel (only checks top two cards)or Broadway (must flip past top two to check bottom two). This is just one example using only one type of draw, there are hundreds of similar situations. Another example would be 'runner runner' gutshots, these are common in Omaha and sometimes hard for even an experienced player to spot immediately, if you flopped top set and your opponent went runner runner to the nuts, knowing this tell will save you a lot of money, since you can fold or perhaps just lose the minimum. Online is much more about an opponents range, but live, a very skillful reader can often put a player on either a very narrow range or a specific hand. Does Farha possess these skills, I don't know, but it is extremely unlikely that Brian does. I know the NLHE grinders in AC get real happy when "the internet kids" show up, because most of them are so easy to read and have no idea of it. This doesn't mean that they can't otherwise play, but they will often overestimate their ability to bluff live and employ lines that work well online, but are simple to pick off live.