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May 15th, 2008 |
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May 15th, 2008 |
Poker on the Internet is highly dubious for anyone who has not had any experience with it. Gambling and money transactions over the Internet have shady reputations and online poker comprises of both. This is not only a reactionary viewpoint; it is difficult to know for certain if the games and operators are completely legitimate. The topics if the players or poker rooms themselves cheat are brought up in separate articles. This article focuses on the issue if online poker is real poker. That is, are the games any good? Online poker is here but is it the real thing? Is there anything substantial to back up the success online poker has had so far? Or is every one playing idiots?
Anyone with some encounter of poker knows it is a visual game. You have got to keep it together when you are betting. You hardly want to reveal anything by bursting into laughter as you bet. Playing in a real life venue, you are interested in seeing a guys face and body language as the player acts. Poker has a visual component but there is no physical component and any game that does not require physical contact can be played over the Internet.
Chess is another game that does not require any physical contact. It serves as a good example to put online poker games in a wider context. Two separate types of chess have always been accepted in chess: the conventional game where the players face each other “over-the-board” and correspondence chess. In a conventional game of chess the players meet in person, sit at the same table and takes turns moving one set of pieces on one board. This is the most familiar version of the game where the players are absorbed by the game until it ends, usually in one sitting.
In correspondence chess on the other hand, the players compete without ever having to meet in person. The players keep track of the game on their own board at home. As the players can not see how the other person moves the pieces, the moves have to be communicated in another way. Historically this has been carried out by sending mail, each move can take days or a week. Since the players have to act in turn a game can run for more than a year. This slow tempo has been part of the game; each move can be thoroughly analyzed by consulting books and friends. Today technology has opened new possibilities. On the Internet, correspondence chess can be played in real time. The distinctions between the variants have been blurred.
Poker has not been interesting as a correspondence game until the possibility to play in real time. Playing a full ring game by sending mail, letting one hand of poker taking two months has to this writer’s knowledge not been appealing to anyone. With today’s information technology the games are not only played in real time, they are actually faster than conventional games due to less down time (faster “dealers”). With a third party – the online poker rooms – taking care of the random shuffling and announcing each players action to the others, a new poker variant is born: correspondence poker.
Online poker and offline poker are different things. Many newcomers believe they are completely different things, but the difference is not massive. The aura surrounding tells is very much Hollywood mystique. Tells is only one part of the game and while it is much harder to read your opponents when you are not confronting each other in-person, there are “online tells”. It has been stated before that poker is a visual game, but foremost it is a mental game.
You have got to keep it together when you are betting or you are simply not making good poker decisions. There is plentiful information available at an online poker table and a good poker player absorbs it. What hands an opponent play, what position the player has, the pot-odds, your opponents betting patterns and so forth are all observable factors. Any action you undertake has all the possibilities to be a well informed decision. The softer issues are harder to assemble on the net; it is tougher to profile an opponent. Online poker is shifted more towards a technical poker.
The game is the same whether it is played in real life or in the virtual one. It is just that different aspects are accentuated. The poker players are the same off- and online. It is just that different qualities are emphasized. The type of players you will encounter in any venue are weak or strong, wild maniacs or rocks. Most players are not easily pegged down as a single stereotype. Working out how they are playing (real poker) is part of the fun online too.
The merits of poker are transferable to a non-physical environment. Poker is a game of information and although some of it is lost by moving the game away from the material world, the substantial information remains. Online poker is real poker, the good players end up with the money. The success of online poker is not the case of ten million flies can’t be wrong.