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Internet Poker Players Bring Speed, Aggression to Table

Posted on May 16th, 2010

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A new breed of internet poker players who have honed their gambling chops online are facing off against old-school competitors, bringing speed and aggression to the world’s biggest tournaments.

In the movie version of one of these showdowns, Edward Norton could play the role of Daniel Negreanu, a 35-year-old player who sought out backroom card games while mastering poker as a young rounder in Toronto. Ranked second in all-time career earnings, Negreanu has won four World Series of Poker bracelets, as well as two World Poker Tour championship titles.

Negreanu says he thinks players today are better than ever, thanks to the online poker revolution. When he started, he had to play one table at a time. Now young card sharks can play 12, 15, 20 poker tables at once, as well as take advantage of a slew of online tutorials and forums.

“If you could take a kid who is 22 now and bring them back to the year 2000, he would destroy the game,” says Negreanu, who’s racked up more than $300,000 in winnings so far this year. “If I could take what I know now and go back 10 years, I could kill them.”

Just as the internet has forever changed the media and communications industries, online play is transforming real-world poker tournaments. While technically illegal in the United States, millions of Americans gamble on websites run by offshore operators. Even as federal regulators struggle to enforce a strange tangle of laws, U.S. lawmakers are considering legalizing internet gambling.

Joe Cada, a 22-year-old player from Michigan, is a great example of the new strain of internet poker whiz kid. At 16, he cut his teeth learning the game online — sometimes playing up to 2,000 hands per day. Though he wasn’t old enough to sit at the tables in Vegas, Cada made enough money playing online poker to buy a house. At 21, he made the jump to live tournaments and won the 2009 World Series of Poker, becoming the youngest champ in history. Cada took home $8.5 million.

“The good thing about online compared live is you get to play a lot more hands with a player,” says Cada, whose 2010 winnings currently sit at $51,450. “Online, you get a better understand on how a player plays. When I play live, instead of online, I try to bring the same strategies and pretend it’s online — but a little bit slower,” he adds about the difference in game pacing.

Cada said he thinks the influx of internet players has changed the state of live play. “Poker playing is about adapting,” he says. “A lot of live players are adapting to these online kids. They have to adjust their game a little bit because they play a little different live than online — which is more aggressive.”

Facing more and more of these internet-generation gamblers, many of whom play several games at once right from their laptop against multiple online challengers, led Negreanu to immerse himself into the speedy world of internet poker.

“My fundamentals were never that good because I could always depend on the physical,” says Negreanu, who hit the local mall years ago to watch people’s body language as he was learning the game.

At the tournament table, he uses skills he’s acquired to read players, noting the look in their eyes or how they spin their fingers when they throw in chips to bluff about a good hand.

“I’m used to seeing people,” he says. “In live play, the numbers don’t matter — it’s his eyes looking at his chips. When we play a game it doesn’t matter ’cause I can tell when you’re bluffing, where online I don’t have any of that — I can’t depend just on reading people.”

Negreanu says the inability to read people online has helped him improve his game by forcing him to focus strictly on the numbers — such as how often a player raises his position.

Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 World Series of Poker, says the internet poker has changed the nature of tournament play. “Poker has got to the point where there’s so much aggression in the game with big raises,” he says.

“I play with a lot of kids who have no respect for money,” says Moneymaker. “If you’re single and don’t have a much going on that’s great. But I have a family. You hear all the stories of someone who has a million in their bank account and the next week they’re broke.”

Though he was the first player in history to win after qualifying for the tournament online, he doesn’t go for the new aggressive style of play that has become predominant in the internet era.

“I just play ABC poker,” he says. “I just sit back and pick my spot. Mathematically, aggression is winning poker. It’s not my style of game. But if a guy is really aggressive you got to take a stand.”

Competitors found out where they stood this month as a slew of internet players, who qualified online, took to the live tables at the European Poker Tournament run by popular poker site PokerStars. Cada didn’t finish in the money in any of the Monte Carlo events; Moneymaker came in 69th and walked away with $33,282.

While Negreanu didn’t play at the European Poker Tournament, he said he prefers a face-to-face showdown, which gives him the chance to rely on visual tells and his ability to read other players.

“It’s easier to play them live than online,” Negreanu says. “They are uncomfortable live. They have the hoodie and the glasses on and they think they aren’t giving anything away — but they usually are.”