I often hear a lot of complaints from people who have a huge amount of experience playing live poker who cannot make money playing online. There are numerous different reasons for that and the first one is based on the fact that live poker is considerably softer on a level by level basis than online poker. In places like Las Vegas then it is difficult to find a cash game smaller than $1-$2 but that is a fair sized game online and filled with adequate poker players. But in live games then $1-$2 can almost be like a NL25 game online.
But online poker allows you to gather information on your opponents by using tracking software. This is absolutely huge because if you can figure out the likely ranges of your opponents then this not only allows you to make more accurate playing decisions but it also increases your bottom line enormously. Of course once you begin to move up in levels then it is your opponents who will also be watching you as well and so this is when you need to begin balancing your range in certain spots.
So the top online players these days are very good at collecting and then analysing and using data to their own advantage. It is very difficult to combat that if you yourself are not using such software. What could be even worse is if you are say playing eight tables at once and are not using software of any kind when your opponents are.
