As a general rule, online play is looser than live tournament play, especially in the early going. This requires some adjustments. First and most importantly, you should tend to over-bet your big hands and bluff less frequently.
Online players will call big bets, even (perhaps especially) all-in bets, which they often view as steal attempts.
I consistently see online players make calls with some very mediocre holdings. This means big bets with your big hands will get paid off more often than in brick-and-mortar establishments. It means that you’ll get caught bluffing more frequently as well.
Pre-flop, online players will raise and call raises and re-raises with a wide range of hands. In a live event, if there’s a raise and a re-raise, unless I know the players very well, I’m likely to fold pocket jacks pre-flop and flat call with queens.
Not so online. Given the same betting sequence, I’ll call with jacks and move in with queens. It wouldn’t surprise me to get called by both opponents and to have them show down something like 77 and AQ suited.
Interestingly, when Internet players play live, often because they’ve won a satellite entry to a live tournament, they tend to tighten up.
It seems to me that there are a number of reasons for
this. There’s more investment involved in live tournaments.
Not only are the buy-ins generally bigger in live events, but players have a considerable investment in both time and making a donkey-like play, especially in front of millions of people on TV. I refer to it as “the embarrassment factor.”
The anonymity of the Internet is a breeding ground for impulsive decision-making. It’s so easy for players to push the call button or ramp up the bet meter to all-in, while playing naked in the comfort of their bedroom, without anyone knowing who they are. When they make a bonehead play that knocks them out, they don’t have to face the discomfort of slinking out of a cardroom (the walk of shame), while the whole table stares at them with mixed looks of pity and disgust. Simply put, it’s a hell of a lot easier to play badly online, since the element of social pressure inherent in live events is lacking.
Another factor favoring looser play online is the fact that it’s easy to find another tournament to jump into.
Players may even be multi-tabling, playing several tournaments simultaneously. If they get knocked out of one, it’s no biggie—they’re still alive in several others.
When I play online, I loosen up my standards. For example, let’s say we’re about midway through the big Sunday online tournament at PokerStars.com with blinds and antes of 100/200/25 and I’ve got 6,000 in chips in the small blind. A guy from mid-position makes it 600 to go off a stack of 4,000 and the next player, with a stack of 3,000, moves in and it’s passed around to me.
Now, in live play, I’ll muck pocket jacks in most cases, unless I have a good read on my adversaries. Queens would be a pivotal hand and I might move in with them or fold them, depending on other information; I’d move in with kings or aces and fold AK.
That’s what I’d do live. Online, my pivot point drops to tens. After a raise and a re-raise, I’m calling with jacks and higher and I’ll think about calling with tens or AK, depending on the circumstances. If there’s been a third raise before the action gets to me, my fulcrum would move up to queens, sometimes calling, sometimes mucking. Online, it usually takes a 3-bet, before the action gets to me, to get me off jacks.
Online, players raise and re-raise with all sorts of garbage. With pocket jacks, you’ll often be looking at one hand that has an under-pair (such as 77, 88, or 99), while the other hand is AK, AQ, or even AJ or AT! Pocket jacks wins this type of match-up about 42% of the time and you’re getting better than 2-to-1 odds. As you can see, calling with a greater range of hands online has value.
Because players play more loosely online, they also call more liberally. This makes moving in witha big pair pre-flop in raised pots an attractive option. It never ceases to amaze me when, early in a tournament, I push with pocket kings over a raise and re-raise and get called by AK and pocket 8s! I guess they put me on a couple of high cards and think they’re in front. Why not? That’s what they’re used to seeing!
Bluffing, on the other hand, loses value online. I’m not saying to avoid taking stabs at orphaned pots, but I think you need to proceed more cautiously when representing straights or flushes that you don’t have. Many players online will get married to top pair and you couldn’t get them off it with a carload of dynamite. So when that third flush card comes on the turn and you move in, you should expect to be called.
Play your straights and flushes fast and you’ll get paid off, but bluff and you’ll proceed at your peril.
I still sometimes get hoisted on my own petard when I play in the Sunday tournament on PokerStars. Here’s a hand that came up recently. About halfway through the event, I was in the big blind and was the chip leader at my table with 15,000. With blinds and antes of 300/600/30 (PokerStars has since changed the structure), an early-position raiser made it 1,200 to go off a stack of 8,100.
Getting almost 4-to-1, I called the extra 600 with 7 3 . The
flop was T 7 2 , giving me middle pair and a backdoor flush draw. I checked and he bet 900 into nearly a 3,000 pot.
As we’ve discussed, weak bets far more often connote real weakness, rather than strength. His pre-flop mini-raise might have indicated a big pair, but his 900 flop bet with both straight and flush draws abounding belied this possibility. I read him as weak and raised to 2,700; he called. This surprised me, because I thought he was weak.
The turn was the queen of spades. We both checked. I now put him on a medium pair such as 88 or 99, which would account for the betting sequence. I decided that if I made 2-pair or 3-of-a-kind, or if either a heart or a straight card hit on the river, I was moving in. The jack of hearts on the river provided the possibility of both the straight and the flush.
The board now read: T 7 2 Q J .
I paused for about 20 seconds, then pushed. I had him well-covered and his tournament life was on the line. He thought for about 3 seconds, called, and I was shown K J
! How he called the check/raise on the flop for about 25% of his stack is a mystery. If he can call this, his river call was easy! After all, he finally made a pair. After the hand, I kicked myself for bluffing on the river. If he had the hand I put him on (88-99), I’m convinced that he’d also have called.
Bluff less and overbet your big hands and you won’t go wrong. This is especially true until you approach the money.
As the tournament progresses and the quality of the opposition tends to improve, bluffing a bit more in certain situations may become a more viable option.
Hopefully, the above tactics will provide you with a nice stack of chips as you approach the money and beyond.
Let’s take a look at some of the new considerations that this happy situation entails.