Making Adjustments - Adjustments are required when moving from Internet play to live play

by Roy Cooke

My career has been built around live poker. Of my 60,000 hours of play, more than 55,000 have been in live play, and fewer than 5,000 have been on the Internet. But lately I have been playing most of my poker on the Internet. Old-timers like myself need to adjust, and if we're going to play both live and on the Internet, we need to adapt our skills to the forum in which we're competing.

In a recent session at Wynn Las Vegas, the $40-$80 hold'em game was good, with several players obviously having limited poker experience. With fewer than 50 hours of live play this year, I felt more out of touch at a poker table than I had in a good couple of decades, and I played very poorly. I left several bets out on the table that a player with my knowledge should have stuck in his stack. I missed reads to make plays that a player with my experience should have made. I left the game slightly stuck and felt that I deserved it. I had failed to adjust to the situation. I didn't adjust to my own lack of feel arising from my live-play rustiness.

While live and Internet poker have many similarities, they also have their differences. I have become accustomed to playing on the Internet, and it has affected my live game in a negative way. My skills that are important in live play but are of limited importance in Internet poker have somewhat deteriorated from lack of use. As the old saying goes, "Use it or lose it." In my session at Wynn Las Vegas, I felt my live-game skills had atrophied.

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