I’ve been playing online poker in some capacity since 2003. One of the things that has really fascinated me in recent years is the overall speed of the poker cycle in today’s game, particularly online. The game changes almost daily, and there are so many sites now dedicated to keeping up with the game that the changes permeate throughout the community with a speed never seen before.

For instance, when I first started playing online poker most players had watched the game a bit on television, maybe played in a few home games, looked at some starting hand charts, and that was about it. They hopped online and made huge fundamental mistakes. As the poker boom accelerated sites (like PocketFives!) popped up where poker players could discuss hands, who the best online players were, and learn the game together.

From the shared information sprang up communities of online players who were dedicated to getting better at the game. The online medium provided a perfect opportunity for this as you could play thousands of hands a week and discuss them with people all over the globe. Players started to get a little better and what used to take years for live players to learn online players were able to get through in months with the number of hands they could play and minds they had access to.

Then Harrington on Hold Em came out. It was an amazing book that revolutionized particularly online poker. All the sudden all of us who had been collaborating online to learn to play better had a blueprint to work from instead of using trial and error along with elaborate discussion to improve.

Fast forward a bit, and if you look back to an article I wrote for this site in early 2007 titled Moving Beyond Harrington, a funny thing happened. A new group of players came in with a style that countered the Harrington style most of the successful players were using at that time. This really began, in my opinion, the first "online poker cycle." Online players adopting a new strategy to beat the games, and then another set of players (some players were in both sets, it’s not a mutually exclusive thing) came up with a counter strategy to exploit this strategy.

I promise there is a point to all of this for those of you out there reading this and saying to yourselves, "This is great Eric, I already know my poker history." The point really is, with the rise of training sites and the continuation of discussion forums and groups of players, this initial ‘poker cycle’ that probably took 2-3 years to play out has started to accelerate into faster and faster cycles that now probably play out in around six months. A strategy becomes somewhat popular, people develop a counter for it, the strategy goes away or people develop a counter for the counter, and so on.

So why does any of this matter to you? Well, if you play online poker I feel like one of the most important things to be aware of is what the current trends are in poker and the best ways to attack those trends. It can be really tough to keep up with all the materials out there now, but if you’re not aware of what people are trying to do at the table you will be lost and ultimately not able to perform as well as you could if you knew more about the players.

One somewhat classic (but old) example is someone will often post a hand and be like ‘OMG, how did these two players get all in 60 BBs deep with 55 and KQo???!?!’ What people often don’t realize is this: The player with 55 is isolating a weak player who limped, the player with KQo realizes that player A will isolate the weak player light, so he re-isolates with KQo. Then player A realizes that player B knows he might be isolating light, and therefore re-isolating light, and decides to 4 bet it all in with 55. Player B knows player A is a thinking player and is getting a good price, and calls.

Now the moral of this isn’t to start 3 and 4 betting KQo and 55 all the time, but the hand played out because both players were very aware of what the other was trying to do and adopted a proper counter-strategy. Getting it all in with 55 60 BBs deep isn’t ideal, but doing so over someone who is re-isolating light is more ideal than folding to the re-isolation play and essentially allowing player B to have free reign over the table and weak limpers because he knows he can apply pretty to you so easily when you isolate.

The important thing if you want to be successful at online poker in any capacity at the higher levels is you have to keep up with the latest trends so you know what people are trying to do at the tables. If you know what they’re trying to do you can consistently stay one step ahead and keep your edge. Slip for even a few months and you might find yourself at the bottom of the poker food chain again.

To be quite candid in early mid/late 2007, not too long after my second child was born I had a lot of things in my life taking my focus away from poker. I don’t regret that one tiny bit as they are all VERY important to me. But I saw a noticeable drop off in my results in 2008 and I know that is at least partially because I wasn’t keeping up with the latest poker trends. I felt lost at the poker table for the first time in years and was constantly unsure of what it was other players were trying to accomplish. It really hasn’t been until earlier this year that I’ve been able to get back into keeping up with the latest poker trends and study.

I saw a pretty immediate boost to my results and I now feel pretty comfortable at the tables that I recognize what other players are trying to do and how to attack it. I still find myself a little lost on occasion, but for the most part I feel pretty good about where my game is now. I still have real life things that keep me from playing but a fraction of the online tournaments I used to, and a lot of my game is now focused on online cash, particularly pot limit Omaha. That being said it was a HUGE re-awakening jumping back into vigorous study of the game earlier this year after kind of auto-piloting it for close to a year and realizing how fast the game evolves. If your goal is to be a top player, you simply have to keep up with these trends or get left behind, it’s as simple as that.

– Rizen

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Eric Lynch has had success in both live and online poker tournaments. In 2006, finished 24th in the WSOP Main Event for $494,000. Online, he has an outright victory in the PokerStars Sunday Million for $156,000. Besides being a sponsored pro at Lock Poker, he is the co-author of "Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand At A Time" along with Jon apestyles Van Fleet and Jon PearlJammer Turner.

Related Articles

Moving Beyond Harrington

Book Review: Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time

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Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand At A Time
by Rizen, apestyles and PearlJammer

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