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The birth of online poker has allowed the game to expand in unprecedented ways and thousands of new players to discover their passion for poker.
However, players who learn how to play online often have a hard time transitioning into live poker, as there are many major differences between the two arenas.
If you fall into this category and are an online poker player looking to play poker in live settings, this article was made to help you adjust to the games faster and know what to expect.
We are going to discuss a number of strategic adjustments you will need to make to do well in live poker games, but before that, let’s talk briefly about the differences between the two and the main features of most live poker games.
Playing online, even at the lower stakes, one might get the impression that poker is a very serious and quite a nitty game. Most players in modern online poker games play reasonably well, enter pots only with solid starting hands, and make bets and calls when it makes sense on at least some level.
Live poker is a different beast altogether, as you will often see extremely splashy live poker games where players make plays that make absolutely no sense at all.
Live cash games, in particular, can get quite wild and splashy, with players limping, raising, and calling with all sorts of starting hands, pots going 6-ways to the flop, and plenty of action for everyone.
Plays that you are used to making in online poker games may still work to some degree but will get significantly different responses from your opponents and often lead to significantly different outcomes.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some major strategic adjustments you can make in live poker games to get better results and improve your win rate by quite a margin.
If there is one thing you can be sure of in live poker games is that players will call bets more often than they should, and with hands, they should be folding in the first place.
Online poker players often have a pretty high bluffing frequency across the board, which is a part of their balanced poker strategy.
However, bluffing only makes sense if your opponents are going to fold some hands, and it often achieves very little in live games.
While this is not to say you should never bluff in live poker, your bluffing frequency should definitely be lower, and your bluffs should mainly be player-specific, aimed against players who tend to fold too much.
If you get into a live game and start blasting off, chances are you will get called for stacks by a trashy top pair pretty soon and be asking for a rebuy.
The idea of playing balanced hand ranges has been all the rage in the poker world recently, but once again, balancing only makes sense if your opponents are thinking about your range.
Since most players in live poker games are just having fun or playing based on their “gut,” there is very little reason to balance your ranges.
Throwing in some occasional bluffs across the board is good to keep your opponents on their toes, but playing more straightforwardly will usually get you better results.
Since your opponents don’t care too much about your range and will make less sophisticated plays than you might assume, you should go for value often when you have the best hand and give up often when you don’t.
While the idea of giving up on decent bluffing candidates may be strange to you at first, you will quickly realize that live players call too often and don’t fold nearly often enough.
The concept of implied odds is another that you learn when learning about odds in poker, but one that has a special place in live poker games. As previously mentioned, live poker games tend to be incredibly splashy, and players tend to see flops with all sorts of holdings.
For this reason, you want to be in pots with hands that have a real potential of making the nuts and not the same kind of trashy hands they are all in with.
Hands like 96s and 74s, which many players play in live poker, should not be a part of your range at all, as these hands will get you into a world of trouble.
On the other hand, hands like suited Aces, pocket pairs, and suited connectors grow tremendously in strength, as these are the hands that flop strong draws and make strong hands.
If you are going to go six ways to a flop, you want to make sure that you have the best of it in most flush over flush or set over set situations, as there is a high probability of playing for hundreds of big blinds in such spots.
The standard raise size in a typical online poker game these days is anywhere between 2x and 3x the big blind, depending on the game format.
In live poker games, this is not quite the case, as you will often see players in a live $1/3 game opening to $15 or $20 as their standard size.
Since this is the standard raise sizing for other players, you can get away with making it that big as well and should be opening pots with a narrower value-heavy range.
Remember that even opening to 5x or 6x will rarely get you heads up in live poker games in most casinos, so when you do open a pot, you should make sure you have the goods.
If you notice that players are all too happy to call such raises with all sorts of trash, you can even keep increasing the raise size until you see fewer players are calling, but you are still getting enough action for your big hands.
In games where raise sizes are smaller, and most players usually fold to a raise, the player in the big blind is often priced in to make a call with a fairly wide range.
In live games, players will make huge opens, and pots will go multi-way, which means you don’t need to worry about big blind defense at all.
The small discount you will get on calling a raise won’t matter too much, as you will often be getting a good price to call raises in all positions.
For that reason, your big blind range should not be too wide and should only consist of hands that tend to make the nuts like suited Aces, suited connectors, suited Broadways, pocket pairs, and other playable hands.
Note that being in the big blind also means you will be out of position, usually against multiple players, which makes any one pair hands extremely difficult to play postflop.
The power of position in poker cannot be overstated, and it goes up even further when pots are often big before the flop and multiple players see the board.
In live poker games, having the button can often be the determining factor between winning a huge pot or not winning it, which is why you should focus on playing in position as much as possible.
It can be very easy to fall into the pattern of going to the flop with many hands from all positions along with all the other players, but this is something you should definitely be careful with.
Instead of playing speculative hands out of the small and big blind, focus on getting in the mix from the button and cutoff as much as possible, even with slightly weaker hands than you would play from other positions.
Another element of online poker that pretty much goes out the window in live games is the idea of re-raising preflop with a balanced range.
When playing a game theory optimal strategy, you should be 3-betting and 4-betting with bluffing hands like A2s or A5s quite often, and some players choose to do so in live poker as well.
However, especially at the lower stakes, it makes very little sense to 3-bet and 4-bet such hands, as the fold equity you are getting is nearly equal to zero.
While re-raising preflop will clear out the field and sometimes leave you heads up, you will often have the worse hand or be against a very sticky opponent who will be hard to bluff out.
Instead, add more value hands like KQs, TT, 99, or AJs to your re-raising ranges and forget about bluffing preflop aggressively.
If you are playing against a group that’s happy to pay you off, make sure you have the best of it when you get involved in big pots and hope for the best.
The idea of playing a balanced GTO strategy in live poker games fades in comparison with a good exploitative approach, as there is simply so much to exploit.
Most players in live poker games play the game so poorly that there is simply no reason to try and play them all like they were robots.
Instead, being observant at the poker table and noticing players' tendencies can help you absolutely crush each individual opponent and have a huge win rate.
Some players in live games bluff whenever they get a chance, while others fold way too much. Some make big bets when they have it, while others only bet big when they are bluffing.
Noticing things like these will improve your results better than any balancing could ever do, and you will be able to win consistently without big swings often associated with a GTO strategy.
Live poker tells may not be the holy grail that some players make them out to be, but they are definitely a useful tool to apply in live poker games.
If you can learn how to spot some basic live tells and translate that into actually identifying those tells in-game, you will be able to do even better against your already weak opposition.
One thing to note is that if you do spot a live tell on a player, you should never let them know about it or boast to others, but rather keep the information to yourself and keep using it as long as it remains useful.
Now that you've learned valuable tips for transitioning from online to live poker, it's time to assess your overall poker prowess. Take the Pokercode Poker Skill Quiz 2024 to evaluate your knowledge and receive free access to coaching videos and additional resources.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, this quiz will help you identify areas for improvement and take your game to the next level.
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