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A huge difference between live and online poker

Many people think that they are aware of the major differences between live and online poker games. But I bet that very few people are aware of the one major difference that I am about to go into right here and now. In live poker then the way that you extract information is in numerous different ways. However one of the major ways that you do this is through visual information. But visual information is free information and experienced live game players are very adept at this. Why should you pay for information in live games that you could have got for free? This is a big reason why many good online players struggle in live games because they are not adept at getting information for free.

In online poker then you have no visual information to base your decisions on and everything that you do is based on what you see on the screen. If it has been folded around to you on the button in a live game and you look to your left and the blinds seem very interested in their hands then you can fold instead of trying a steal. Your information has been got for free and it has saved you some money. Now if this happens in online poker then you cannot get information in this way. So if you want to try a steal with a hand like 6d-5d then you may want to do so and make the raise less.

You need to pay for the information in an online game that you could have got in a live game for free. So online poker then is about paying for information and the skilled online players know how to pay the least for that information. This is why when you play online that you see many players who raise less to attack the blinds. Many players will have already clicked their automatic fold buttons if they are holding junk and for all you know then their "fold to a raise" button may have already been activated.

But how can you possibly know that? The answer is that you don't and so you can get that information for the cheapest possible price. If you are playing $1-$2 no-limit and you want to make a steal raise then many players will make a pot sized raise to $7. There is nothing wrong with this if you are superior to your opponents as getting them to place more money into the pot can only be beneficial to you.

However if you are playing multiple tables or your post flop play is suspect in some areas then enlarging the pot may not be in your best interests! So a raise to $5.00 or even a minimum raise to $4 could still get the job done but with a far better risk-reward ratio. If the blinds had already clicked fold then better to risk $5 to win $3 than $7 to win the same amount of money.