Playing Time Zones Online

[I Eat Gamblers]

Do you ever think about the name of an online player? I'm not talking about the funny ones, or the poker related ones. I am talking about the informational ones, the ones that show country pride....for example lets say the name " stockholmcharlie " is at your table, i would say he might be from sweden, maybe sirwilliam might be england, or caligurl is california. My point is that even if it only a few hrs or 12 hrs difference "Timing is Everything" I noticed that i make more money online at certain times of the day so i started paying attention to little details. Then like a brick it hit me, not only was i playing players from around the world, but according to time zones they were into the wee hrs of the morning, most likely tired and playing looser.

Anyone else had the same or similar findings with online poker?

[tstrachan22]

I have notice the EXACT same thing but I can never have enough good sense to write down the times of day * DOH *- On the other hand, knowing that this might be true I think your post has inspired me to keep track of that and look up my tourney history to see if its compatible-BRAVO (clap clap clap)
Hmmmmmm...........But as with a Ying there is a Yang and I have had some extremely bad runs that also may be attriubted to "time of day".

What do you think?

[Vito_Nuccio]

I take all factors into consideration when playing and making poker decisions.

At Absolute I can not see where a player is from but on Nordica a simple float over will tell me.

In the real world narrow profiling outside law enforcemant is rude and can get you into trouble, but in the poker world a great deal of information is benificial. Time zones do make a difference, but do not read too much into it. The player may work afternoons and have the ability to play at weird local hours and many more reasons alike. This does not mean discount the time zone thing entirely, just weigh it like it is.

There are many observations you can also utilize when using other player names for added information.

Many names determine sex (not level of play ladies, just added info) When you see numbers in the name you can determine age (Frank59, probably born in 1959 or 59 years old when signing up). Nationality pops into the equasion. Other names give you hobbies or career info, like 'Welder256' or 'FiremanPete' etc. Even when location not given you can detemine by the name. Sometimes you can even peg an intelligence level to the naming convention chosen. There are many pieces of information you can and should extract from the players account name. That is one reason I am Vito_Nuccio, selected out of respect for a late relative. The name has nothing to do with my poker or life style, but may give some false infomation to the others like nationality and age. Most players think I am an old man from Italy, but I am actually a middle aged American mutt (Mom pure Sicilian, Dad pure mutt).

Also, the player avatar may shed some clues for you to process. You can disect an avatar to discover more about the player. Ask yourself, why did this person use this picture? What can I extract from it to determine what type of person this is?

Some names and avatars will give you two or three bits of information. File these away and add them to the mix when determining a plan of action against these players. Profiling at the poker table is a winning way. Peg someone, if you find out your initial accessment is incorrect, then change your thoughts, but keep profiling the others continuously and store that info in your poker file cabinet.

Later,

[RiverstarsVictim]

Personally I like to split my poker rooms into 2 groups, European based rooms & American based rooms and play to their night times. Especially at weekends when many drunk gamblers come online I find the end of the month can be quite rewarding too when the gamblers get their monthly wages paid in to their bank accounts

I suspect there's a 3rd group I could add, Asian & Australian but unfortunately they dont suit my hours

At the end of the day, you can never have too many poker rooms to choose from and some rooms are going to be more profitable at certain hours of the day compared to other rooms.

[liladypokerpro]

I have found it much easier to cash in tourneys in the daytime versus the wee hours, but yet it is easier to make a large profit from cash tables in the wee hours versus the daytime. This is what I have noticed.

[Fictive]

Yes and no to the original question. I basically don't pay much attention to time zones, with two exceptions: friday and saturday evening/night. I live in Europe, and I do my damnest to be able to play those two times. My time, say, 18:00-22:00 pm is a great time due to people playing drunk. Great time to make money. Then again, those are times for the worst bad beats...

Last friday I was playing again, and on one of the tables there was a player who was clearly drunk and I had been following him for a while. The game was NL100 and I got dealt AA in UTG. I open to $4, a short-stack player in MP pushes all-in for $12.50 and button calls. I re-raise to $49, button thinks for a while and pushes all-in for $112 or so. I call and he turns over A9s... What do you know, a 9 on the flop and a second one on the river. Like that's not enough, the same guy against me, I had opened again $4 with JJ and he called. The flop was 48J, two diamonds. I bet pot with my top set, and he raises big, I go all-in, he insta calls with K6 of diamonds and hits his flush on the turn and no help for me. I seriously couldn't do more than laugh, despite losing two buy-ins, I found that hilarious. So let that be a reminder to all about playing against drunken people... It's not always "give me your money, donkey", it can also be "stop taking my money, donkey".

[epetel]

Local time is something I take very seriously. After some observation I started playing every day between 10 and 12 am local time (MET). I'm fresh out of bed and had my coffee and I pick only USA/Canada based players (talking about HU). Thats basicly 4-6am ET and even though there are many alert players who show no weakness at all, there are enough sleepy ones to make it worth.
Avatars can provide some info too but thats tricky. I do have opinion about different avatars but it hardly ever influences my decisions (although I must say I love people who play as a "shark" ).