| 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). |