[oldandboring]

You'll have to forgive me because I know literally nothing about competitive poker. Are there players whose experience is primarily online, who show up at in-person tournaments and lack the "soft skills" necessary to excel in that setting? Preventing themselves from exhibiting tells, etc.

I'm not trying to relate this back to the AI/junior/senior developer question, I'm just curious about the dynamic in poker since you seem to know what you're talking about.

[tstrimple]

Yes. But it goes both ways. Online and in person have the same calculations for value, but lacking physical tells you learn to rely on those calculations more. As a result you’ll likely see a lot stronger players online (better at knowing and playing the odds) than an in-person game. This doesn’t even touch on the number of “cheaters” who use assistance online for calculations and bet placement.

Another analogy that might work is chess. I’ve only ever played “classical” chess and when my son got interested in playing I would crush him every time. Up until the point he got into bullet chess and was literally grinding out dozens of games a day where I’d casually play a game of classical chess like once or twice a month. His confidence and ability skyrocketed and I’m not even a challenge for him anymore. Now I’m not a real chess player, and there are areas of his game that are definitely weak compared to classical chess players who have played as many games as he has. But to turn around so quickly from not being able to win a game against me to dominating me in every game was impressive.

[sandspar]

One striking thing about Gen Alpha and young Zoomers is how RAPIDLY they learn. Being young is like being on learning-focused anabolic steroid #1 + online programs and AI are like learning-focused anabolic steroid #2. It's really impressive. Take any "time to learn" estimate you have, like "2 years to become good at chess", and today's young people can slice it by 10x.

[tstrimple]

I agree with that, but one of the core lessons I've learned over my career in technology is that iteration rates are critical for learning. The shorter you can get the feedback loop, the faster you'll learn and advance. Companies that release software once a year or every other year are objectively terrible at it versus companies who release weekly or even daily. Bullet chess and online poker drastically shorten the feedback loop for those games compared to the "traditional" method of playing.

[idopmstuff]

I played online poker successfully for years back when it was booming.

There are definitely online players who lack the skills you're describing, but that's not as much of a problem as you think. You can hide tells just by shutting up and staying still while you're in the action.

The other half of that is reading other people's tells, and online poker is more helpful there than you'd think. Most of reading other people (especially at relatively low-mid levels) is about reading the story they're telling with their action rather than reading their face/words/etc.

Classic example is: There are two hearts on the board on the flop and the person calls your bet. Turn comes, not a heart, person calls again. River comes, not a heart, person suddenly bets big to try to get you to fold, because they had two hearts and failed to make their flush.

Bigger picture, you read their style of play. Are they playing a lot of hands or very few? Passive or very active? None of these things require reading the person's mannerisms, and you can practice all of them very well online (though online you also run tracking software that gives you stats on opponents, which helps when you're playing a bunch of tables at a time).

Writing this out makes me miss online poker. Shame the games are terrible now (and I also have a child and business as opposed to the endless free time of my twenties, to be fair).

[Stwerner]

I can't speak for everyone, I've definitely seen people make the transition or at least bring in-person tournaments into the games they play. I suspect a lot do just prefer online because of how convenient it is and don't really explore in-person events.

For me, there was definitely a high level of anxiety and nerves when I sat down at a table for the first time again after playing online for a while. But it gets easier and easier to shake that off and just get into the flow of watching betting patterns (which is the main thing you have to work with online) which to me was always the primary source of tells rather than anything physical. So maybe in my case the answer to your question is yes haha :) though it didn't seem to impact me negatively much.

[gamblor956]

Yes, online poker players tend to be worse than players that learned in-person. Pros love to play online players in person; they consider it free money.

To put things bluntly: at any tournament, 90% of the players after the first round will be players who learned in-person. Only a handful of online players (like Moneymaker) have made a successful transition to professional poker.