[CrazyLond]

Very interesting and thought-provoking article.

I don't think it is fair to discount the opinion of live players who haven't had success in online games. The skill set for playing live is far more complex than that for playing online. People talk about online pros who have seen more hands in their life than, for example, Doyle Brunson and are thus, more experienced in a fashion. The thing is, a player in a live game has a lot more information to process per hand. You get information from the way people bet, talk, dress, drink, the way they handle their chips, the inflections of their voice, where they are looking, conversation they are participating in, etc. There are a host of other distractions and things to divert your attention from the game. There are also a number of psychological factors. For example, for the most part, people can leave or join an online game without much concern for going to the board, infuriating the other players(hit and run) or the time spent traveling to or from the game. There is a higher level of patience required only seeing 20-30 hands per hour at a single table. There is also a psychological difference between handling casino chips and online ones. Not only this, but there is a need to maintain your own "poker face." People who have never or rarely played poker in a casino think this just means being a rock, but this is often unrealistic for people who play a lot. Words will be said, bets will be made, etc. Every player gives out a certain amount of information and becoming "unreadable" is a skill all in itself.

Many of these things are processed subconsciously. Good players who play live will often mention having a "feel" without exactly knowing where it comes from. There are so many things going on at a live poker table. The subconscious and conscious minds have to put together a host of things along with the basic poker information such as bet sizes to develop a range for a player's holding. When thinking on multiple levels (what does he have, what does he think I have, what does he think I think he has, what does he think I think he thinks I have, etc) this extra information multiplies the complexity of the game.

I am not taking anything away from online pros, just stating that the fact many of the best live players cannot beat online games is not surprising. The online game is missing much of the information that live pros use. Those live pros who rely more heavily on the information that is available online will do better in that forum.

Add to this that online players are exposed only to certain facets of the game and indeed, do play zillions of hands with only this information available and it follows that they will generally be more adept at online games.

However, the statement that online pros would not dominate live deep stack games with the best and most experienced live players in the world seems a reasonable prediction.