by Marvin Somers

Created on: April 06, 2010

Psychology is an important part of any poker game; but too few people realise the huge gulf between the relative psychologies of online and live poker games. Online games are faster, more readily available and, at the lower stakes at least, often a much lower standard than live games. The result is that people play more hands, have less time to make decisions and are often playing when tired or stressed and in no condition to make those decisions. Maintaining a healthy psychological outlook is imperative to successful online poker play.

The manifestations of the difference in psychology are evident in most poker forums. People often claim that sites are fixed, that they are continuously cheated out of their money by bad beats that have never happened to them playing live. But they failed to realise that while even professionals probably only play a few hundred hands a week of live poker they can play many thousands a hands a week online, meaning that bad beat situations will be only too common.

However, luck evens itself out in the end, and the winners in online poker are the ones that make the correct decisions in each situation time and time again. It doesn’t matter if you take a bad beat; as long as you made the correct decisions to get there in the long run you will be ahead. The key is equity. If you make the same decision in the same situation 100 times, would you come out ahead given average amounts of luck? Yes? Then it was right decision.

To ensure that you are making these decisions, you have to bear a number of things in mind:

-          Online poker is available anytime anywhere, but that doesn’t mean that you should be playing it whenever or wherever you feel like it. If you are tired or stressed get some sleep; it will still be there the following day. You should make sure that you are calm and alert whenever you play.

-          You need to take a long view. Don’t expect that you will come out ahead every session. There will be ups and downs. You need to plan for these and make sure that you are playing at a level where you can afford to bankroll downswings as well as upswings.

-          If you are experiencing downswings, take the time to analyse your game. Work out where you are losing the money. If you’re losing money because you weren’t getting the right cards or you weren’t hitting the board often enough, then don’t panic, you’ll get your luck eventually. If it is because you were making the wrong decisions, consider taking a break and moving down a level.

-          Learn to recognise the signs of tilt. If you’ve just lost a big hand when all the signs were there that you could have gotten out early, walk away, get some fresh air, take a break.

Poker isn’t a game where you can sit down and expect to make money every time you play. Online poker in particular, where you don’t have the same tells available as in a live game, is a game of very small margins. You need to bear that in mind when you play and make sure that your mind is in the correct state to make the marginal decisions when it matters.

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