Playing Online Poker
Beginning a few months before the WSOP every year all the major online poker sites begin running satellites to the Main Event. In 2009 Full Tilt Poker even offered satellites to some of the smaller events, which was a brilliant marketing move in my opinion. The great thing about these satellites is that online poker sites are no longer allowed to buy players in to any event at the World Series of Poker. This means they have to deposit the money to a player’s account and hope the player shows up. Because it’s great advertising for each site to have players in the World Series and on TV, most online poker sites, including the two biggest, Full Tilt and PokerStars, will provide incentives for satellite qualifiers to actually show up and play. These include extra spending money, free hotels, freeroll tournaments and other perks.
My decision to try to satellite could not have come at a better time. After having been detained by the NYPD Vice Squad I decided to keep a low profile until the WSOP and concentrate my play online.
I have never really written about playing online before, but any poker player who only plays live (particularly playing live poker in New York City) is missing out on an extraordinary amount of value and opportunity to improve.
Value
Sadly these days underground poker games do not run every day / night. Back in the early 2000s they might have, but these days there are usually only a couple games running on any given night (not including the various underground casinos around the city, which attract some crossover, but mostly a different clientele). This means that, just as you have to pick and choose what clubs to play at and whether to leave a must-move when you are about to be moved, you also have to decide every night whether to play online or live.
I happen to prefer playing live, so if a good game is running I will make every effort to be there, but sometimes I cannot escape the fact that I am going to make twice as much money online. Not only can I play more hands per hour, I can also play more tables. And if I am feeling particularly good or bad on a given day I can play higher or lower than I normally would.
Opportunity to Improve
I hate to say this as a mostly “live professional” poker player, but online players are, for the most part, better than live players. This is one reason that the live New York poker games can be so profitable, but they are *only* that profitable if I keep improving faster than my competition. By playing poker online in the comfort of my apartment (or at the Starbucks down the street from me as I often do…) I can see how others are playing and use software like PokerTracker to constantly evaluate my play. As a live poker player it is all too easy to forget about a hand once it is over.
