allaboutpoker

Years ago I made the majority of my income playing poker, most of it online.  I even worked as a prop (player who is paid by the house to sit in games) and as a security agent.  I was a strategic hand history analyzer, not a computer security expert.  I played on approximate 20 sites and played as a prop on eight sites.  Please don’t ask me which sites I worked for, because I’m not going to put that in print!

Back in the days I played online, the games were easier, much easier.   However, even back then, the games online were much harder than the same limits would be in a casino.  $3-$6 limit hold’em is often the smallest casino level game available, and you can expect this game to be full of loose, inexperienced players.  To find a game with similarly loose an inexperienced players online, I would need to play 50c-$1.00! On a huge site like party poker I was able to find similarly easy games at the $1-$2 level as well, but on smaller sites, forget it.  I say I was able to find easy games, but this required considerable game selection, the topic of a soon to be published blog.

The reason smaller sites tended to have tougher games at smaller levels was that they employed props.  Props are players who are paid by the house to sit in games and keep the tables full.  Typically a prop will be paid by getting all or part of the rake back from pots that they have won.  A prop player can’t sit all day in a full ten handed ring game, they are there to keep the short tables going. Therefore these players tend to be quite good at short handed play!  The bottom line is that props who aren’t good poker players don’t last long, because the rakeback they receive from the site won’t be enough to cover their losses over time.  Thus, only good poker playing props remain.

Most sites use props or have used props in the past.  It is almost impossible for an upstart site to get games going without props.  However, once a site gets big, they will no longer need them, as there are always plenty of players available for starting and maintaining games.

Another reason online poker is so difficult is that everyone who plays online gets a lot of experience quite quickly.  Online poker is fast, sometimes nearly twice as fast as live poker.  New players often have a tough time keeping up with how fast things go online.  However, the speed means each player plays many, many hands.  You could easily play thousands of hands in a single day if you had more than one table going at a time.

Multi-tabling is playing more than one table at at time.  In fact, I used to play up to six or seven limit hold’em tables at once, or three to four no-limit hold’em tables.   When I was playing seven card stud, or seven card stud high/low split eight-or-better, I would play a maximum of two tables, but usually just one, due to the need to concentrate on watching other people’s upcards.  Also, as the stakes would go up, I would have fewer tables open, due to the games and decisions being tougher.  Some players have far more tables open than I would play, in fact I’ve watched someone play 15 games of limit hold’em at one time!  This requires that the site have good software and you have a big computer screen.  It also requires that you make very fast and accurate decisions. Multi-tabling online is NOT for beginners!

These days there are many more online players, and many more good online players.  The ones that started back when I started now have a decade of experience or more.  Everyone gets much better very quickly or they simply go bust, simple as that.  The popularity of poker on television has also sparked a huge jump in the sales and publishing of poker books, which many people are now reading.  Although some of the books are downright terrible, even the worst books are likely to improve your game a little bit.  However, some of the most popular books give very good advice, which is making the “average player” better and better every year.  This effect is seen to a much higher degree online than in live games.

In part II cheating, security and money handling will be discussed.

PokerGuru

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