Online Poker

Online poker is much faster than live poker because of strictly imposed time limits and possibility to play on several tables at the same time. The time limits in online poker rooms typically look like this:

If the time runs out you will automatically check if that is an option, otherwise fold.

If you are a beginner you can handle maybe 2 tables at once. The truly professional players can handle 8 or more tables at once but most players never go higher than 4 tables. You can normally play around 60 hands per hour on a single table and up to 100 hands if the game is short-handed. If you play on multiple tables you can have up to 300-400 hands per hour, depending on number of tables and players. This stands in sharp contrast to casinos and other live poker rooms where you are limited to a single table and let us say 30 hands per hour. The following table sums up the number of hands you can play per hour, assuming the tables are full:

You can aquire more than ten times as much experience per hour when you play online poker than when you play live poker. This means that you can become a professional player within relatively short time if you take full advantage of the possibilites offered by the online poker rooms. The fact that the semi-automatic and anonymous world of online poker, unlike its live poker counterpart, is more or less free from social pressure and cheating as well as dealer mistakes is a welcome bonus that adds further weight to the online poker side of things.

There are, however, a few known cases of insider cheating in the world of online poker, where an employee has gained access to the system and played high stakes against ordinary players while being able to see their cards. These are rare occurances though and all reputable online poker rooms employ necessary safe guards and security protocols to prevent this from happening. When playing live poker you are a great deal more vurnerable to cheating. The raw and unsheltered face to face environment of live poker is on the other hand a big part of its charm.

Ultimately, live and online poker venues are very different from eachother and sport unique advantages and disadvantages to the player. In the big scheme of things, online poker is a very quantitative game that plays out smoothly at any stakes whereas live poker is a very qualitative game that needs high stakes to be fully enjoyed.