Poker Articles

A Bit of Maths: Internet v Live Play

1. Introduction

The question often asked is, "which is more skillful, Internet or Live play?" The answer seems obvious to all 'live' poker players, but let's analyze it properly.

When we analyze a great move that a player makes in a given situation, invariably the player has collected data about the situation into the form of a proposition. The proposition will translate into a probability and the player will bet on the strong end of that probability. The only errors that can be made are in the collection of the data and in the estimation of the resulting odds.

The data collected will include:

• Tells
• Texture of the board
• Personal hole cards
• Retained information about the opposition (betting patterns)
• The current emotional state of the opposition
• Trends in betting patterns
• The opposition's perceptions about you
• Action to date

And a really good poker player must:

• Be a great observer
• Have either a good memory or the means to record data

Now let's expand on each of the above data types.

2. Analysis

2.1. Tells

Obviously, on the Internet the only tells you have are the time it takes for a player to take action and the conversation they deliver in the text box. Not much actually, and the first of these two rather poor offerings is in fact suspect, as of course some delays are down to connectivity problem, or the simple fact that the player is making a cup of tea.

On the other side in live play we have an infinite variety of tells; twitches, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. For more information, read Mike Caro's excellent book. The end result is simply that live play is a massive winner in this category.

2.2. Texture of the board

The board is clearly visible in both forms of poker so this category is a clear draw.

2.3. Personal hole cards

Actually, there is a very slight advantage online, as you do not need to remember your cards or peek at them to double check that you have a monster, or a card towards a draw. However, a really good player has no trouble remembering them, so since we are analyzing good play we shall call this category a near draw.

2.4. Retained information about the oppositions (betting patterns)

This is a tricky one to judge. Using PokerStars as a base, the ability to record information about a player should give an edge over the live recording medium (i.e. the brain). However, the power of associative memory allows a good player to almost replay videos about the opposition, which is actually more powerful than text!

Recording textual information about players online is not only inferior to associative memory, but also acts as a crutch that may damage your ability to utilize associative memory. A bit like becoming dependant on your satellite navigation system, then having to use an old fashioned map when it breaks down. I know. I get lost all the time now. I no longer have the machine.

My vote is for live play here.

2.5. The current emotional state of the opposition

On the internet, if a player takes a bad beat, or just wins a pot, or perhaps argues with an opposing player, we can use this 'observation' as valuable information as to how they will play the next pot. However, 'live play' clearly wins this category as the emotional state of a player can be better determined when you are face to face with them.

Remember that body language is the large part of communication, over 50% as I remember.

2.6. Trends in betting patterns

What I mean here is 'global' trends in betting patterns, such as raising from the big blind when heads up with an unraised small blind.

Now here I believe Internet wins, because the viral nature of such patterns is far more prevalent on the net.

2.7. The oppositions perception about you

How the opposition sees you as a player, such as 'tight' or 'loose', is actually a mirror image of retained information about the opposition (i.e. their betting patterns) and for this, 'live play' must win.

2.8. Action to date

Well, I give the internet a thumbs up here, as we can see information on the screen and refer to dealer messages to back track the history of the hand. Sometimes in live play we forget (we shouldn't) who was the original raiser, or whatever, but with the internet we need not fall foul of this problem.

Internet is the winner in this category.

Let's take this a bit further.

Firstly, let's actually assign percentage scores in each category for internet versus live play.

A bit unjustified, but hey, who's writing this anyway?

Now, here's the cool bit. Let us assign percentage weightings to each 'data type', that is how significant that category is with respect to the 'edge' that a good player has over a lesser mortal.

Here it is:

This gives us a weighted average of 37.39% for the internet and 62.61% for live play.

3. Conclusion

Playing poker is not like playing chess! What I mean is if I played the world chess champion 1000 times I would probably lose 1000 times, but if I played Daniel Negreanu heads up 1000 times, I would win at least some of the time, maybe a lot of the time.

What we have done a little crudely, but nonetheless with some panache, is to estimate how much that edge can be affected in live play versus internet play. The answer is that live play is significantly more favorable to good play than the internet, in our estimation, 62.61% in favor of live play.

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