Sexton Discusses the Effect of Online Poker on Your Game

There is an ongoing discussion among poker players as to whether playing online poker is good for your game. A number of "real" poker players believe sitting at the table and being able to see your opponents is where their advantage lies. They claim that if you take that away, as you do when playing online, how can you become a better player?

To those people, I simply say: "To think you can't become a better player by playing poker online is ludicrous." Yes, poker is a people game, and it certainly should be beneficial to you to be able to see the mannerisms and tells of your opponents in a live setting. However, as the saying goes, "There is no education like experience." The key to improving in poker is gaining experience (assuming you learn from your mistakes).

Before computers and online poker, it took years to gain experience playing "real" poker that someone can now obtain in months by playing online. That alone should tell you a lot.

The proof is in the pudding for online players if you look at the results of the two largest events in the history of poker, the 2004 World Poker TourChampionship and the main event at the World Series of Poker. At the WPTChampionship, two of the top four finishers were online qualifiers, and at the WSOP, the winner (Greg Raymer) and runner-up (David Williams) were online qualifiers who pocketed $5 million and $3.5 million, respectively! And don't forget about a guy named Moneymaker from the 2003 WSOP. He turned $40 into $2.5 million! More important, he sent the message, "It can be done."

I get a kick out of the "players" who think online players are "dead money." (That is the worst expression in poker.) The world is passing by players who think like that. At the WSOP, for example, 30 percent of the field consisted of online qualifiers, yet that "dead money" took home more than 50 percent of the nearly $26 million prize pool.

It should appear fairly obvious by now that online tournament players fare pretty well when they play in live events. Playing tournaments online can only help you become a better tournament player. On sites such as PartyPoker.com (not only the largest online site, but by far the world's largest poker room), you can play tournaments literally around-the-clock.

Like cash games, in tournaments there is a variety of games and buy-ins you can play on PartyPoker.com. Single-table tournaments (which pay three places) usually take around 60-90 minutes to finish. They provide an opportunity for you to play shorthanded poker, which is something you must learn how to do if you ever want to win a tournament. Multitable tournaments enable you to experience all aspects of tournament poker (and usually take from four to six hours to complete) and provide you an opportunity to "turn a toothpick into a lumberyard."

I love what professional player Steve Zolotow said about online poker: "Online poker is not an imitation of live poker, but just a different, more modern way to play." Other than physically being at the same table with your opponents, everything else is pretty much the same when playing poker online. It's fun, entertaining, exciting, challenging, potentially rewarding, and, hopefully, educational.

Remember, there is no better education than experience.

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