Went interstate for work yesterday and had a four hour session of live poker at Australia’s premier card room at Crown Casino in Melbourne. I don’t get this opportunity very often – while we do have a casino in my home town it only offers a 5/5 nl game, with $200-$500 buyin. The Crown offers a 1/2 nl game – or rather it did, as this now appears to be discontinued and the 2/3 nl game is now the cheapest available. $50 min – $200 max buyin.
Unfortunately things didnt go so well for me. Continuing my rule against telling bad beat stories lets just say I was severely damaged after getting AA and AK in the first orbit, and getting stacked with the AA. Ground out for the next four hours but never really recovered.
However thats not the point of the blog entry. What this really demonstrated to me is just how different live poker is to online for so many reasons. In this version of the live game, play is generally awful, with little positional play, many limpers, and many callers of re-raises. Given that most people dont buy in for the max, its very likely if you have a hand that you will end up all in, or at the least one of your opponents will end up all in. Take my AA hand for example. I was fortunate that UTG straddled to $9, and two more callers came for the ride. In the hijack seat I bumped it to $40, and got one caller – this was pretty rare, usually there was more. So the pot was approx $100 preflop, and the flop comes K 9 2 rainbow. Excellent flop for my hand and its a no brainer move in there.
Again though the point is there’s precious little poker to be played in those scenarios. Alternatively, for the rest of the night I saw multiple callers of $15 raisers, and people calling with hands like T3, 69, and the like, especially suited. Once you got some callers almost everyone else is priced in. So effectively I was reduced to a strategy of set mining – hoping for a pair, calling along with the crowd, and praying to hit. Its pointless raising becuase you cant thin the field a lot, and the majority of the time a continuation bet wont scare the opponent off. So your AK-AJ type hands are worthless if they miss the flop. The other option of course is to hope you can limp some crap in late position and hit the flop hard.
The other noticeable difference is the speed of play – I played four hours and would be surprised if I saw 125 hands, with many people grandstanding and agonising over decisions. Back in my hotel room I was disappointed to have a losing session but thinking about how few hands I really saw, I realised just how much of a gamble a thon those live games are. Contrast this with online, where even two tabling you’ll see this many hands in an hour. So what this all means is that the variance is magnified live – less hands, worse play, and of course a smaller bankroll which (for me at least) affects the way I play – online knowing I have 30+ buyins for my level gives you freedom to play well and be aggressive – live with only three or four bullets and knowing that most times you’ll get called makes you play totally differently. Mind you if you get hit by the deck its payout time
I’ve always relished the opportunity to play live, and the purists (of which I am usually one in most areas) will tell you this is the “real” game. Yet more and more, I feel uncomfortable in these live games – they are gamble fests, not much better from roulette or blackjack. Online gives you more hands, better games, more appropriate stakes. Nothing beats the pure atmosphere of the felt, the chips, the dealer and the feeling of confronting your adversary. But if growing the BR is the objective, online to me seems far and away the more +EV decision.