Differences in strategy
between Live and Online

By Nick Eisel

Early in my poker career I read an excellent book called Internet Texas Holdem by Mathew Hilger. The book had a few special sections that went into detail about the differences between playing live poker and online poker. After years of playing, most of what Mathew said still holds true, but the thing that surprised me most is that when you're playing Limit Holdem, the number of differences in the two areas where you can play just isn't really that high. Sure, there will be more preflop raising and aggression online. The general strategy for beating the games however doesn't change very much.

The same isn't true about No Limit cash games.

What I've discovered in the past six months or so is that playing No Limit live as opposed to playing it online is about as different as night and day. Not only are the games completely different, but the basic strategy you should use to get started is also unique to each game. I found this very surprising considering the structure was identical and the only differences were that you can only play one game at a time live rather than six tables, and you also can get better reads on people live.

The reason that the games are so different is primarily based on the preflop environment of a normal game you can expect to sit in. The first thing that you'll likely notice is that live games are far more passive than those online. This makes for a ton of multihanded limped pots and also causes some big changes to general strategy. I'm more than willing to limp with any reasonable hand in any position as long as the table hasn't been raising preflop very much. I'm talking about any pocket pair, suited connectors or one gappers down to 54s. I don't want to give any strict guidelines though as what hands you play will depend on the lineup and the flow of the game. Live players tend to pay off more hands though and also make mistakes in how much they bet, so this should definitely make you want to include more hands in your arsenal. Live games to me feel more like Bingo than actual poker because I am just trying to get in there as much as possible and make some kind of hand that will get paid off. If you attempt this same strategy online and are constantly open limping, you are setting yourself up to be steamrolled. The differences I'd suggest in online No Limit cash games are to tighten up the hands you play from a live game considerably, and also rarely if ever open limp. You can still do it to set traps or if the table has been passive and limping will encourage more limping, but generally you should come in for at least triple or four times the big blind if you are going to play. The typical online game is much tighter than live and open raising with do a lot of good things for you in terms of stealing blinds or setting up a heads up pot (hopefully with position) where you can then fire a continuation bet and make some healthy profit since you took the lead in betting. One thing I rarely even think about when I'm playing live is to steal the blinds because people are more apt to make weak calls. It's often better to open limp and just extract money from them later since most of them are ignorant to the size of the pot anyway and you save money by limping. The exact opposite is true online.

Another thing to consider is that the average skill level of the online player is much higher and most live players at the lower stakes in NL play mainly for recreation. It's because of this that you have a lot more moves available to you in the online game and if you want to succeed you have to strive for balance in your game. This means that you have to be able to check raise the flop with air online while you would rarely attempt such a play in a live game. Value betting is the name of the game in the live arena. Another big thing that comes to mind is that I'm willing to bet the pot on the flop with a big draw and then reraise all in online while I would probably rather just draw at the hand cheaply live and then get paid once I get there.

Every game is different and you shouldn't take any of the examples given here as strict guidelines to follow. What you should learn from this article is that while the buyin is the same and the blinds are the same, the game is completely different when you're playing online than it is live. Big strategy adjustments must be made to do well in both forms of the game and it's important to keep them separate in your mind. Remember that it's better to push small edges online than it is live and that you should be limping a lot in live games and rarely online. If you take these things to heart and are constantly trying to improve, you should do well.

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