This is something that has happened to me, and I am sure it has happened to thousands of others. You develop your poker skills to the point where you consistently beat your local game of friends, drinking buddies, or frat partners. Then, you take to the internet, and find out that you are not the top dawg anymore.

Instead of raking in the cash, you find yourself breaking-even, or perhaps paying to play and wondering what went wrong. Here are just a couple of things that players encounter when moving from face to face home games to internet poker.

All Your Reads Go Out the Door

One of the things that lets people crush home games is the fact that they have acquired a set of tells and reads on their opponents. You know who the loose cannons are. You know who the rocks are. You can read the table, sometimes without knowing you are reading the table.

Once you go online, all that information is gone. You have to pay attention from moment number one to see who the solid players are, and who the aggressive players are. You might even find player types that do not exist in your home game.

The fact that the game is being played over a computer adds, or takes away a lot. Your solid poker face is no longer an asset. The fact that someone else at the internet table is actually clapping when they see their hole cards doesn't send any kind of message to you. You can't see them do it.

I know several big strong men who regularly pick up pots by the way they position their bodies when bluffing. In online poker, that doesn't work. So, a lot of the techniques you bring to the home game are lost the moment you sit down at a table at Party Poker.

Online Poker is Not a Videogame

Because it's so different than face to face poker, and because computers and screens and controllers are involved, online poker can seem like a videogame.

Many people play differently online, without a doubt. If you are an anonymous player, sitting in the comfort of your own home, it is much easier to push a button than it is to push a stack of chips into the pot with all of your friends and tablemates watching you closely. People call too often in online poker, at least at the lower stakes.

This does two things. It takes away the effectiveness of the bluff because people are more likely to call you. And, if you are getting looser in your calling, it opens up a new hole in your game. It took me a month to realize that in a live game I fold KJo in early position because it's a trouble hand. Online, I would play that kind of hand. Hmmm, and I should still be confused over why winning online was more difficult for me?

Another pitfall of the online experience comes from the lack of table-talk. While everyone can talk and pass the time at a live poker table with conversation, not everyone can type well. So as the bad cards come at an online table, instead of chatting and keeping focus on the game, many players become distracted. One friend told me he played online and watched television for three weeks before he realized that he was "multi-tasking" by accident.

It's harder to win at something if you're not really paying attention to what's going on.

If you understand some of the differences between your home game and the internet game, it's easier to bring your internet game up to the same level. Of course, there's more.

Better Players

This hand happened to me at a small buy-in no limit game years ago. I sat with AQ in the hole, raised, got callers, and saw a flop. The flop came QQT, giving me not only the Three of a Kind, but the best kicker possible as well. One opponent bet, I raised, and the third opponent re-raised. I of course called. And I continued calling down to the river, only to see my opponent turn over Pocket Tens.

It's not a matter of how I played the hand that was scary. It was the fact that I purely did not see his hand coming. I never even thought of the possibility that he could have flopped a Full House. At that point I knew that I sometimes lost pots because I don't know enough about the game.

I may not have lost that hand because my opponent was a better player, but having been blindsided like that, I knew that there were better players out there than I was. And, that if I sit down at an internet poker table, essentially inviting anyone from anywhere in the world to play against me, I shouldn't be surprised if someone that knows more about playing poker than I do takes a seat at my table.

These are just several of the reasons a player can take to the internet with their poker game and find themselves coming up short. Still, the more you are aware of how the game of poker changes when it is played online, the better you can deal with the new environment.