The revolution in online poker over the past 15 years or so has meant many things: convenience, games at lower stakes, and fish stocks rising by the year.
But is online poker all it's cracked up to be, and does a casino or live cardroom do a better job?
Here we beat the drum for both disciplines and examine the pluses and minuses of your friendly cardroom and the best online sites on the net.
Online poker is great: you can fire up the laptop any evening you want, or play a few hands before breakfast if you can find a busy table. Best of all, you don't even have to get out of your pyjamas.
What about the social element, though? Brick n' mortar casinos and cardrooms are big, bright, and glitzy, and you'll get to play with and talk actual human beings!
Casinos and cardrooms are designed to provide you with places to enjoy Texas Hold'em and Omaha, but there's always more. Whether it's a live band, all-you-can-eat buffet, or drinks promotion, chances are there's an offer to tempt you in off the street.
Better still, you can earn some great comps and bonuses whenever you play. If the poker room is in a larger casino, you might also be able to earn points on your Player's Card on roulette or slots which can be redeemed later.
While online sites have some big-money guarantees, they're only reserved for the very big sites, and you might not get them all year round.
With the live poker boom continuing, you can find the casino running its own festivals or hosting for one of the big worldwide tours. At the very least, you'll get a changing schedule that includes weekly and monthly guaranteed tournaments in a range of discipline
And regular players can take advantage of Leagues which reward regular play at the cash games or tournaments with bonus prizes.
Unless you're on one of the new webcam poker sites where you can see your opponents' faces, online poker is a pretty anonymous affair, with a few chatbox insults your only contact with other players.
At a live game, however, you can chat to the dealer and other players and work on your physical tells. From spotting tells in other players to honing your own bluff tells to throw opponents off the scent, there's nothing like live poker for the complete all-round poker experience.
Online poker is great: you can fire up the laptop any evening you want, or play a few hands before breakfast if you can find a busy table. Best of all, you don't even have to get out of your pyjamas.
What about the social element, though? Brick n' mortar casinos and cardrooms are big, bright, and glitzy, and you'll get to play with and talk actual human beings!
Casinos and cardrooms are designed to provide you with places to enjoy Texas Hold'em and Omaha, but there's always more. Whether it's a live band, all-you-can-eat buffet, or drinks promotion, chances are there's an offer to tempt you in off the street.
Better still, you can earn some great comps and bonuses whenever you play. If the poker room is in a larger casino, you might also be able to earn points on your Player's Card on roulette or slots which can be redeemed later.
While online sites have some big-money guarantees, they're only reserved for the very big sites, and you might not get them all year round.
With the live poker boom continuing, you can find the casino running its own festivals or hosting for one of the big worldwide tours. At the very least, you'll get a changing schedule that includes weekly and monthly guaranteed tournaments in a range of disciplines.
And regular players can take advantage of Leagues which reward regular play at the cash games or tournaments with bonus prizes.
Unless you're on one of the new webcam poker sites where you can see your opponents' faces, online poker is a pretty anonymous affair, with a few chatbox insults your only contact with other players.
At a live game, however, you can chat to the dealer and other players and work on your physical tells. From spotting tells in other players to honing your own bluff tells to throw opponents off the scent, there's nothing like live poker for the complete all-round poker experience.
Unless you have a pad hidden in your coat pocket, making notes on your opponents at a brick 'n' mortar cardroom is tricky.
Online players don't have that issue, however. With Notes boxes available at most good poker rooms, you can take short notes on opponents you regularly come up against. This is great for coming up against them the next time. Many grinders, especially at the lower and mid-stakes, will be multi-tabling and playing the same way every time; this is the perfect opportunity for you to make notes on how they bet pre-flop, their play at showdown and whether they spend too much of their timebank making decisions (a sign of a multi-tabler).
In addition, good cash game players can invest in an HUD (Heads-up Display) which sits 'on top' of a cash table and tracks your opponents' moves.
With a decent HUD you can calculate and store the various stats on your opponents, such as the VPIP% (Voluntarily Put In Pot percentage) and percentage a player raises pre-flop (PFR).
Speaking of multi-tabling....
Poker is all about making a solid, long-term profit. And that means getting in the volume of hands.
In a live setting, you have to factor in the time needed to travel to the casino, the speed of the dealer, and the fact you're only playing one table.
As you can imagine, unless you're on a steam or cashing in a big-money tournament, making regular profits at live poker can be a long and arduous task.
Online, however, you can multi-table, playing 2, 3, 18 tables at the same time.
Multi-tabling takes time to master but once you can comfortably crush two or three SNG tables at once while keeping your concentration on all the action, your ROI (Return on Investment) will grow.
Live cardrooms have terrible players, it's true, but nowhere will you find really awful players like an online room.
Fish stocks aren't as big as in the early days of online poker, but at the lower stakes you'll still find plenty of loose-passive players who play too many hands, get bluffed off flops they've missed, and generally lose their roll before the next Sit 'n Go has started.
Fancy a game of $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em cash? Perhaps some $5/10 Pot Limit Omaha is more your thing, or HORSE, Razz and Sit 'n Goes at a variety of stakes.
Compare that to the offering at your local cardroom and there's no comparison. The beauty of a typical online room is the sheer range of games on offer.
Good rooms will stuff their lobby with cash games to suit all wallets and all disciplines, and the best rooms have plenty of players to make sure the games are always running.
If you can, playing both a little live and online poker is a good way of improving your all-round game. Good online players, with so much more experience and having played more hands, often find live poker slow and the opponents can be tougher. But attention spans aside, there's no replacement for experience.
Whatever setting you opt for, just enjoy your game and use the time well to plug leaks and better assess opponents - the profits are sure to follow.
