I was in Vegas this week staying at the Bellagio and it was the first time since November that I was able to log a few serious sessions of live NL. Since Nov 2006 I have been playing nothing but online no limit and the difference between live and online is huge.
The first thing that I found so interesting was the over betting. In a 10/20 NL game the standard open was $80, which is fine, but once three players took a flop massive over betting would occur. The pot would be $240 and all of a sudden a guy who cold called a preflop raise would lead out for $320 from the SB on a 27T rainbow board. Wow?! This happened 5 or 6 times, sometimes the lead would even be as high as $500.
When I play online I make a lot of my money from 3 betting light in position. Always alway always 3 betting. It was hard for me to adapt to live at first because players would either never open raise or only open raise with the top 2 or 3 hands. After about an hour you could figure out who you could 3 bet light, but these situations do not come up nearly as often as they do online.
Your image at a live table is so easily craftable because of the amount of time between hands. One night when I first sat in the game there was a big fish directly on my right. He would limp probably 90% of his hands and then play so passively postflop. So of course every hand he limped I would immediately make it $100 in order to isolate him. We would see a flop, I cbet, I win. After doing this 5 times in 1 orbit a player at the table made a comment about how stupid aggressive I was. Anyway, the fish busted and left so I stopped doing this. I think I went 2 orbits (which was probably and hour in this game) without seeing a flop. All of a sudden that same player that called me stupid aggressive made some comment about how I was the tightest player on earth and he was going to start folding AA face up to me. It is so awesome when another player makes a comment like that out loud to the entire table. He thinks he is harassing you and trying to goat you, but he is just giving you the exact table image you need.
The last thing I noticed, and was really impressed by, is that the live NL pros do an amazing job of keeping the fish happy. They never berate them, always make small talk with them, and keep telling them that they played their hands fine whenever the fish takes a beat or plays a hand poorly. Tons of these fish struck me has huge degenerates with no life and money to burn. I am sure these fish view poker as a social thing and the pros really do a great job at providing a nice comfortable setting for them.
I don’t think I could play live all day, but it sure is a great break from playing online.
