My first experience with online poker was back in 2001. And all I remember is putting $200 into an account and within like a week it was all gone. I didn’t really mind it much because I was running pretty well at the casinos and home games I was playing in. I enjoyed online poker for the large tournaments and promotions they offered like winning a seat to the World Series of Poker Main Event, but for the most part I just stuck with playing in live games. This was until about 2 months ago when I decided to sign-up for an account at FullTiltPoker.com.

Once again I put $200 into an account and started playing poker over the internet. What follows are what I consider to be the pros and cons of online poker versus live poker.

The Blinds (a strong opening)

Advantages
1. Playing in the comfort of your home and at your hours
2. There’s always a game going
3. You see more hands and experience more situations
4. Get to play with a variety of different people from punk kids to pros
5. Freerolls and Bonus Rewards

Disadvantages
1. It’s Hard to set-up a Real Money Account
2. I Get Distracted Easily on the Internet
3. Don’t Drink and Play
4. The Majority of the Players are Crazy
5. Trusting the software, is it a fair game?

The Flop (advantages)

Let’s start off with the advantages. First of all, if you don’t live near a casino or if you don’t have any friends that play poker than online poker is your promise land. And it’s great that you can play whenever it fits your schedule and not have to worry about spending money on gas, tolls, or parking garages. The other great thing is that there is always a game available no matter what you want to play. If you want to play Stud, Hold’em, Omaha or even Razz most poker websites always have at least a few tables of these games in progress. Sorry, I haven’t found a poker website that offers Acey-Ducey yet though. And with all these games available your poker experience is going to grow faster than it would in a normal live game.

With a CPU acting as dealer instead of a human dealer that has probably been dealing cards for the last 2 days straight you’re going to see more hands and get to react to more poker situations than you would in a “live” game. You can also play at more than one table at once which also increases the number of hands you get to play in a night, something that would be hard to do in real life unless you have arms like Mr. Fantastic. By seeing more hands you learn faster when to bet, when to call, when to raise and when to fold. You’re also going to experience more bad beats, but that’s poker. And if you’re a good player you should be receiving more bad beats than you dish out. Most of your bad beats will come from the sea of newbies who are green to the game after watching it on ESPN. Just like in real life you should always be looking for the sucker at the table. And as the old saying goes, “if you can’t spot him, it’s probably you!”

Online poker let’s you play with people of all ages and from all kinds of different backgrounds. You could be playing against someone’s grandma, some zit covered 14 year-old or even High Stakes Poker Greats like Doyle Brunson or Phil Ivey. Quite a diverse group compared to the same 7 people you normally play with at the kitchen table during your weekly home game. And it’s because of this widespread access to the game that the “Poker Boom” hit in 2003 when an accountant from Tennessee named Chris Moneymaker spent $40 on an online satellite and turned it into $2.5 million when he won the World Series of Poker Main Event. Now it’s almost the norm at the Main Event to have won your seat by playing in an online qualifier, whether it’s a satellite, freeroll or some other promotion that every poker website offers.

Besides winning at the World Series of Poker most poker sites also give their members “bonus rewards” for the number of hands/hours they play at the site. These “rewards” can be anything from more money into your account to entrance into tournaments that can win you a seat at some of the most expensive poker tournaments in the world. Casinos offer these same kinds of bonuses but with the amount of hands you’re playing online you going to be reaping these rewards faster.

The Turn (disadvantages)

Now here are the problems with online poker. First of all, America isn’t a free country. If it was I would have no problem taking my hard earned money and making my own decision with my own free will to put it into a poker site account. The U.S. government has pretty much banned major credit card companies like VISA and MasterCard from allowing their card holders to deposit money into any kind of foreign based gambling website. Now you ask, “How do you get your money into your account then?” Well, prepare yourself for a process about as much fun as having a hemorrhoid removed. You basically have to have your money transferred through an online bank site like Netteller, which is what I used for my FullTiltPoker account. It’s a time consuming process and you get that unsure feeling of giving out your bank account information that if the wrong people got a hold of would mean “Hello Bankrupt City!” So needless to say this is one of the problems with online poker today.

My other problem with online poker is that I’m the kind of person that gets distracted too easily on the internet. I’ll start off playing a few hands but once I start getting trashy cards and fold, I usually end up watching TV or looking at porn instead of focusing on the game and how the other players are playing. In a casino the only thing that can really distract me are the hot waitresses at The Borgata, otherwise even if I’m not in a hand I’m still paying attention to the pot in progress. Another problem I have with playing online poker is that I tend to drink a lot more when playing on the internet. Any good poker player knows you shouldn’t drink too much when playing; it can seriously affect your decision making. Now, I know this but I still tend to drink a lot when playing online and the next thing I know I’m stuck for $80 calling inside straight draws. Maybe it’s because I’m in the comfort of my home and I don’t have to drive anywhere, maybe it’s the porn or some random piece of web junk I’m looking at, either way drinking when playing poker is usually going to have a negative result.

But I can’t be the only one drinking and playing because there are a lot more crazy players in virtual card rooms than there are in real ones. Players are more willing to make calls and bets than they would normally do in a live game. And then when they do make their longshot 2 outer on the river they’ll tell you why they were correct in doing so. In every online poker tournament I’ve ever played in there is always at least 2 – 5 players at the very beginning who feel the only way they can win is by going “all-in” in the very early stages of the tournament. It isn’t uncommon to see people putting all their money in the middle with suited connectors or hands like A-10 and usually they end up cracking your AA or KK. Don’t get me wrong there are crazy players in live games too, but the information superhighway brings them in by the bus loads.

The final issue with online poker is how much you trust the website and software you’re playing with. It’s easier for there to be cheating like collusion, if for instance there are two players playing at the same table and who happen to be on computers in the same room or on the phone together. But I’m referring to how fair and random the poker software really is. I’ve played for hours in real life and have seen the same crappy cards over and over, but one night online I must have received 6-10 offsuit three times in less than a half-an-hour. I thought it was just a weird circumstance until the next night I got J-4 offsuit as my starting hand 4 times in a half-an-hour. And keep in mind this was all at the same table, not spread out among 3 or 4 tables I was playing at the same time. Poker websites are going to make their money whether you win or lose because of the rake they have on each pot, but to me personally I prefer seeing a human shuffle the deck a few times and then deal compared to a program going 0000111010101010001011101101001010 and then putting out the cards.

The River (conclusion)

Poker would not be where it is today without the support of online gaming. More players than ever are being introduce to the game and are learning in one month what would take an old grinder years to experience. I think dedicated poker players should take advantage of both online and live poker to hone their skills. I personally still prefer live poker over internet poker. There’s nothing like staring someone down and knowing they don’t have it and calling their bluff. But I can only see internet poker growing bigger and bigger. They have already started having “Online Poker Championship Tournaments” that one day might rival the historic “World Series of Poker” tournaments. But for now you’ll find me flopping a set in either a real casino like the Borgata or at FullTiltPoker.com where I go by the screen name Brisk317.

Good luck and see you at the final table!