FULL TILT POKER BLOG

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I recently received an e-mail from a Full Tilt player named Greg telling me that he and his wife had been watching me play on Full Tilt for several days. They said they enjoyed it, but were disappointed that they never got to see my cards “when you call on the river.” He wanted to know if that was “standard for the pros, so we will not know what you called with.” He was hoping to learn from my playing.

I emailed him back to explain that was not the case and how seeing cards at showdown worked, live and online. Our exchange brought up some useful points that I thought would be worth describing here.

1. Except for one unintentional reference, the e-mail was very complimentary. I’ve been losing a bunch lately on Full Tilt (even though I think I’ve been playing well), and it’s nice to hear that someone could be educated and entertained from watching me play.

The unintentional snub came from Greg mentioning that he never saw my cards at a showdown after I called. That must be because every time he saw me calling on the river, I must have been calling with the losing hand.

2. The cards seen at showdown mimic what you would see in a live poker game. What an observer sees on the hand replayer is the same as what appeared at showdown. (There is one exception, a situation in which online poker does not mimic live poker and where players and observers see different things. See the next paragraph.) In general, no one gets to see the losing hand of a caller on the river. Whether online or live, with red pros or other players, the act of calling on the river requires that the bettor show his hand first. Because the caller shows only after the bettor, the caller in a live game has the option to muck his cards after the first player shows. If I call and have the losing hand, I muck it face down. In live games, some players turn over their losing hand anyway, but I don’t recommend that. You are needlessly giving away information. Consequently, the online program mimics the smart player’s practice of mucking the losing hand after the bettor has shown. Again, it has nothing to do with red pros or quirks in online poker software.

There is an exception, however – a quirk in the online software. Even though neither observers nor players can see the hand of the losing caller in real-time, players at the table, in the hand history and hand replayer, can see all hands that are shown down. Observers, however, using the hand replayer, see only what they saw in real-time: the hand of the winner but not the hand of the losing caller.

I have no idea why the program does that, but I think it always has.

3. Greg made a good point about observing online poker as a learning tool. I don’t think most people on the site realize the value of the pros’ heavy and conspicuous participation in play on the site. I know Full Tilt’s motto is “learn, chat, and play with the pros,” but nobody has really focused on how you can learn simply by watching a good player play some random hands.

I’ll probably come off sounding like an old geyser, but I blame TV. TV poker emphasizes climactic hands in which the audience and commentators know the unexposed cards while the hand is unfolding. This makes for exciting television and some good poker lessons, but it is too limiting. Poker isn’t about ONLY the big hands. And poker is definitely not ONLY about the identity of the cards.

If you have the luxury of watching a bunch of hands quickly, like online, you can pick up a great deal regardless of how often you know the identity of the players’ cards. First, you get an idea of how often different players are playing by position. Second, you can develop a sense of the aggressiveness of different players. Who’s raising a lot from late position? Who’s defending their blinds a lot? Who’s winning pots before the flop? Who’s winning them (and with what betting patterns and sizes) on the flop and on the turn?

So many of the chips move without a showdown. Nobody knows what anybody had. The best players pick up chips in those situations but you can’t learn how their doing it if you focus only on the hands where you see the cards.

In addition, you get the benefit of seeing the cards after showdowns, and you can learn from those hands as well. Using the hand replayer you can go back and understand the betting decisions on each street.

I once watched Mike Matusow play an online tournament for five hours. He folded almost every hand. Nevertheless, I was able to write three blogs describing all the valuable things I learned.

By the way, if you watch me play and want to know my hole cards from a showdown that, as an observer, you are not able to see, just e-mail me at mrchaotic@aol.com. Send me as much identifying information as you can:  the tournament, the hand number, the hand history (if possible). I will e-mail you back (probably within minutes if I am not playing multiple tournaments) with what I had.

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One Response to “#859 – Watching Online Poker: Educational or Sick?”

1. JJ Says:
   October 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 am

   I believe that the reason losing players hole cards are shown in the hand history/replayer is to prevent collusion, or at least make it detectable by the other players at the table.

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