See also
Since correct poker play is shaped, among other things, by the number of foes you face, you want to pick a version that suits your style and strengths. On the one hand, if patience is a problem for you, you’ll go nuts playing a full ring game, where patience is not just a virtue but vital. On the other hand, if you like to play the waiting game and you’re not comfortable frisking it up with the FNL crowd, you should steer clear of short handed games, where the tight, conservative style appropriate to full ring play is a recipe for slow death.
In a perfect world, of course, you’d have the skills, temperament and flexibility to play in both type games.
In hold’em, one starting hand in five will contain an ace or a pair, so in a full ring game, an average of two players per deal will have a decent hand. With such a high likelihood of quality starts (quality here being defined as something better than the unpaired, unaced hands we’re most frequently dealt), we should be generally unwilling to put money in the pot if we don’t have to. Those who lack this discipline have a big leak in their game. In no limit cash games online, this leak becomes a gaping hole that gushes money. If you just play tight in most full ring games, waiting for strong hands and betting them strongly, you’ll make money from the multitudes who can’t seem to master this art. Your A-K will get paid off by A-T or A-J, and your T-T will get paid off by A-8 when the flop comes 8-3-2. These are common outcomes in full ring games online. Please be sure you’re on the right side of them. In short, have the A-K, not the A-T.
The beauty of online play is its speed. The hands come quickly enough that you can afford to throw away bad ones and wait for your inevitable share of good ones. Yet, the very pace of online play creates its own accelerating “need for speed.” We get so used to seeing hands now, that we become impatient to wait even a few short moments from now. Having folded under the gun with J-9, we might be out of action for the next thirty seconds or even a full minute. That can seem like a lifetime online, so much so that we might rationalize calling with that J-9, just so we don’t have to sit there and wait. You know what? Just say no. Just say no to playing bad hands out of position. Say no to self-indulgent calls. Take up knitting between deals if you have to. Don’t let impatience move you off your sound basic strategy of selective-aggressive poker.
