Per this discussion, consider the wannabe rounder living in North Platte or South Bend, circa 1996. Apart from his (or her; okay, his) home games, he might only get to play real poker against real foes a couple of times a year, during infrequent forays to Las Vegas or distant riverboats, there to cram in as many hours of poker as his brief stints allow. In the name of improving his play, he could very well have it in mind to investigate different approaches to playing a hold’em hand like K-Q suited under the gun (UTG). Trouble is, he may encounter that hand only once or twice during his stay; a mere handful of times during his whole poker playing year. It’s tough to go to school on a subject when meaningful lessons are so few and far between.
Now fast forward ten years to the brave new world of internet poker, where if you want to put in twenty or thirty hours at the table, you need only unplug the phone and lay in a healthy supply of Red Bull. Given the accelerated pace of play online, with hands coming at you fast and furious (2x fast and 2x furious if you’re playing more than one game at a time) it’s reasonable to expect to see that same UTG K-Q suited a couple of times an hour, giving you ample opportunity to analyze and strategize, refining your approach to playing that hand while your last experience of it is still fresh in your mind.
The impact of this supercharged learning curve cannot be understated. From internet qualifier Chris Moneymaker’s win at the main event of the 2003 World Series of Poker forward, we have seen poker players weaned on internet play crossing over to triumph in large tournaments and live cash games. Why do you suppose this is? What advantages do you imagine an internet player has over someone who has only played in realworld games?
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Here’s one I can think of: An internet player, accustomed as he is to the blistering pace of online play, may find live games to be luxuriously slow. Relative to what he’s used to, live play offers ample time to analyze situations, weigh factors, and come to conclusions. Adjusting to the brick-and-mortar (b&m) realm, he actually gears down to a much slower speed, not unlike a runner who has trained with ankle weights but removes them before a big race. Nor do individual decisions vex him, for he has practiced making poker choices by the thousands or tens of thousands in the privacy of his own home (or office when the boss wasn’t looking) for the last seventeen months straight, for hours at a time. He has seen a lifetime’s worth of hands and crammed a lifetime’s worth of learning into his short poker sojourn.
Here’s another edge I can think of: We outnumber them. Five years ago, the internet player in a realworld tournament was an oddity, a rarity. Leather-assed cardroom veterans viewed us as dead money, test tube babies with no clue and no chance. Moneymaker alone did not change all that. He just waved the flag of the future. Now, every realworld poker tournament, large or small, features a field filled with savvy and schooled internet players. Some tournaments, like the Party Poker Million and UltimateBet’s Ultimate Poker Classic in Aruba, were created specifically to give online players a realworld target, if you will, to shoot for. Online players have crossed over to b&m cash play in force as well, and while the snide old guard may still regard us individually as dead money, collectively we define the field. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you want victory in realworld poker these days, you’re gonna have to go through internet players to get it.
Of course, the internet player does not have every edge. Many online players making the transition to realworld play have no experience in picking off tells, for instance, or guarding against giving off their own. You can often recognize an internet player in a b&m game by the fact of his folding (or tipping his intention to fold) before the action gets to him. He’s used to clicking the fold in turn button on his computer, and not aware of the need to wait to act. Internet players can also be quite impatient. Used to playing a souped-up version of the game, they can find the practical considerations of realworld play—the pushing of pots, the shuffling of cards—make b&m games annoyingly, even agonizingly, slow. Impatience, of course, can lead to the loosening of starting standards and other reckless adventures. Can you think of additional ways that internet players cede advantage in a realworld game?
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In any event, the distinction between internet player and b&m player is getting fuzzier and fuzzier with each passing day. Just a few years ago, online players occupied a sort of ghetto; you felt sorry for them because they didn’t live in a place where cardroom poker was available and they had to make do with that sorry substitute, the online game. Many—most?—realworld players had at the same time a certain hidebound resistance to online play. It wasn’t the game they grew up with, and they viewed it with disdain. They couldn’t imagine sitting down to a computer screen if b&m games were available to them. Today’s serious poker player has no such prejudice. He knows that online poker is no less “real” than realworld poker and considers it his mission to master both. He has learned what those in the vanguard knew to be true from the start: Online poker is no better nor worse than realworld play; it’s just different, that’s all.
It’s odd to think of “a few years ago” as ancient history, yet, in the swiftly evolving world of internet poker, that’s exactly what it is. A few years ago, you could count the number of viable internet poker sites on one hand. Now, you can’t even keep track; new sites spring up every day. (Naming online poker sites is a growth industry; so far as I know, shoemoney tonight.org, floptopset.net, and pokerbeatsworking.com remain unclaimed.) Not only has online poker evolved but also a whole support industry has sprung into being, with data mining “sniffer” programs like Poker Tracker, online poker news and strategy sites, poker schools, discussion boards, blogs, bulletin boards and forums, ad nauseum. Furthermore, online sites have become a mainstay of realworld tournaments, funneling players by the hundreds or thousands to such prestigious televised tournaments as the World Series of Poker and those of the World Poker Tour.
It’s worth talking about television for a minute, for if internet poker is a forge for new players, then televised poker is the fuel that fires it. Thanks to the invention of the lipstick cam, allowing us at last to see what all those lying liars actually hold, poker on television has gone from the functional equivalent of watching snow melt to some of the most compelling reality TV on the air today. In turn, the ready availability of internet poker means that anyone who watches Pro Poker Throwdown or whatever can instantly scratch the inevitable itch to play.
The fact that “ordinary guys” are winning on TV merely enhances the appeal of televised poker and in fact creates a delicious vicious circle. People see people winning millions in televised tournaments. They’re inspired to play online; they do so, and some of them satellite their way into the televised tournaments. There, their sheer weight of numbers ensures another win, or at least a high finish, for another average Joe. People see said Joe bringing home the cheese, and the cycle begins again.
In the meantime, the internet poker player base continues to expand, and those who have been around for a while—or those who learn fast—continue to profit. This, too, goes against the conventional wisdom of, say, 2002, when it was glibly predicted that anyone who wanted to make money playing internet poker had sure as hell better do it fast before all the fish were caught, skinned, filleted, pan fried, and digested with a greedy and self-satisfied burp. Now we know otherwise. Sure, losing players go broke and quit online poker every day. They hazard 100 or 200 bucks, and when their bankroll’s gone they decide that their time is better spent on other leisure activities like philately or quoits. But others come along to take their place, and this will continue so long as televised poker—poker porn, if you will—keeps whipping newbies into a frenzy of poker excitement.
Sure, the bubble may burst. Governments might crack down. Global economies could collapse, and leave none of us with two virtual nickels to rub together. The polar icecaps might melt and flood us all. Certainly the media, with its notoriously short attention span, will eventually turn its shining spotlight elsewhere. But even when that happens, we’ll still have a poker playing population that has increased geometrically in recent years. The waters will continue to teem with fish.
Does this mean that internet poker is an ongoing gold rush? Of that I’m not so sure. Undoubtedly,