There are several key differences between live and online play but one of the key areas that many live players struggle with when they attempt to make money online at great poker sites like 888poker is that expert play in the online environment involves a far greater degree of information retrieval, analysis and usage. Your sophisticated opponents have the facility to take and attain and then use far more information against you that many of the strategies that you can get away with in a live game will get ruthlessly exploited playing against good players online.
A lot of people incorrectly assume that online poker is crooked because they haven’t or cannot succeed at it. How can it be possible to not be able to beat NL100 online when I can do well at $10-$20 live is an often quoted argument? The fact is that online play is far tougher than live play by several levels merely because multi-tabling forces tighter play and players can watch you far more closely and then get software to help them even more.
So the natural knock on effect of this is that you absolutely need to balance your ranges out far more online than you would in a live game. If you are playing against “Gustaf” from Stockholm and you are playing six tables and “Gustaf” is playing four of those tables and you are seeing 90 hands per hour per table then he is collating data on you to the tune of 360 hands per hour which is a formidable rate. It will not take him long to begin to build up a picture of how you play.
So if you are very aggressive and like to triple barrel then this strategy will get ruthlessly exploited against better players! Raising pre-flop and seeing a flop heads up will likely mean that your opponent has missed and many LAG’s try to exploit that. These bullying tactics may work against weak players but stronger players will realise that if your betting pattern goes raise-bet-bet-bet far too often then your range on the river is polarised massively between powerful hands and fresh air.
Powerful hands are not that easy to come by in hold’em and so if you are not value betting mediocre hands as well then your opponents can make some call downs that are far lighter than they normally would against other players.
