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 "Even
after over 30 years [of broadcasting baseball], every single day I come to the ballpark I see something new." -- Lindsay Nelson
The growing popularity of online poker not only is creating many brand new poker players around the world, it’s enabling many
semi-experienced players, who seldom get to a casino, to play much more often. While this phenomenon is good for poker in all its
forms, there is an effect that can transform a lot of these players who could be winners into losers, and they then abandon poker out
of frustration because they can’t handle the fact that they have all the tools to win, and they should win, but do not.
Everyone who plays poker regularly sees a whole carnival of weirdness at the poker table day after day. People play bizarre hands for
no apparent reason; odd flops happen back to back; some angleshooter manages to get away with a clearly out-of-line move; the three of
clubs or the eight of hearts seems to be haunting you; some
goofball decides to fall in love with 42o and pound
your AA on a A53 flop. To someone who plays regularly, all this is ho-hum stuff. Someone who has played as much poker as I have simply is
seldom going to be surprised by the stuff that happens at a poker table. But new players, even the ones who have put in some hours and play
pretty decently, when they see runner-runner spades two hands in a row, especially online, they just find that surprising, shocking, fishy.
 I
often read messages by newbie players expressing shock and amazement at genuinely run of the mill events. AA losing to 42o when
it was three bets before the flop is a specific example. As a California player, I’ve seen this basic scenario many times times.
Ho-hum. It is mildly interesting, but certainly not shocking. But this player sees a hand like that and, rather bizarrely, concludes
online poker has to be rigged. This must be cheating --
nobody calls three bets before the flop with 42o. (He obviously never met
Lucky Kevin.)
It should be evident that if an online casino wanted to cheat customers, they sure wouldn’t do it by sending 42o against AA. They
would send 77 against AK on an AK7 flop, something similar to that. But this player got too wrapped up in the mundane bizarre-ity of
this run of the mill bad beat for AA to realize that.
These newbies playing online, who seldom play in brick-and-mortar casinos, are having an experience similar to what they would have if
they sat down in a typical California $6/12 Holdem game. If you are used to relatively passive by-the-book poker, the first time you
are in an aggressive, super-loose game, well, you are not going to know what the heck is going on! However, in a casino, you can see
the players making all these bad plays. And frankly, usually when you can look at a person who calls three bets with 42o, it
doesn’t surprise you that much! You can visually see that this person embodies “oh, I have two cards, I call.” Online you don’t have
that visual stimulus that kinda makes sense of it.
But these basically sensible newbies have neither the playing experience nor the visual aid of seeing the other players. So, when they
have a losing stretch, either because they don’t play well enough to win, or because of a bit of bad luck, they sometimes complain
games aren’t on the square.
I suggest the truth of the matter is much more basic: these newbie players simply don’t know how to play loose game poker well
(especially Holdem). If you play from a basic strategy geared for playing in a weak-tight game but happen to be in a
loose-aggressive game, you are toast. And, you are especially doomed if you expect the
variance you have in a weak-tight game to be the
same variance that you have in a loose-aggressive game. Everything about online poker tends to make it more volatile than casino
poker. That doesn’t mean it is more or less profitable than casino poker, but it does mean that if you aren’t expecting fluctuations,
you are going to be surprised and disappointed when the big fluctuations do come.
My suggestion to these new players being created is to give your poker game time. Gain experience and learn to play better. Adapt
to the type of game you are in. You'll see some new craziness every single day.
Also see Poker Experts and
The Hazards of Being a Poker Role Model |
