If you have cut your teeth playing poker online and want to put your skills to the test in a true land-based casino, beware: while online poker and poker in a physical casino environment might be the same basic games, there are numerous differences between them that you will want to know going in. Otherwise, you could end up losing a lot of money as you figure out those differences in real time.
The first and most obvious difference between online poker and land-based poker is that the latter is a good deal more social. When you enter a virtual poker room online, everyone is there with the specific purpose of playing poker and gambling, so play rollicks along at a fairly rapid clip. When you sit down at the poker table in a physical casino, though, people are also there just to have fun and be social. Expect conversations, jokes and plentiful social interaction, all of which can slow down the play.
If you let it, this social interaction can serve to break your concentration and lead to mistakes. However, it can also provide you with a lot of information on your opponents than you would ever have access to online. On the Internet, you don’t know what your fellow players look like or how they react to missed draws or big hands, so they more or less remain enigmas. In social poker, you can watch other players for subtle changes in facial expression or body language, which can in turn help you discover tells that will help you win hands or avoid mistakes.