As the poll results are showing, the online players tend to overrate themselves. Way overrate themselves. Not that they aren't good. Many are very good. But they are good at playing their game, which is online. They get eaten when playing live. It's simply a different game.

Online players make too many mistakes. When you are playing 200 hands an hour, one mistake isn't a big deal. But, at 25 an hour, one mistake can be a disaster. Quantity can make up for quality. No quantity, you better have quality.

Online players are too aggressive and may not be able to adjust to changing conditions. That's the strength of live players. They adjust, sometimes many times in a sit. They target specific opponents, where online players playing multiple tables really can't.

Online players aren't used to being patient. They don't have to be. They play short-handed, multiple tables and see hundreds of hands an hour, vs full ring games with maybe only a half dozen playable hands an hour. Inevitably, they begin pushing hands that aren't profitable, playing them too far, and paying off too often. The lack of action is a killer to players used to playing online.

Live action players have to be patient and disciplined far more, have to adjust to conditions, and get the most value they can out of every winning hand. A mistake can put you down for a long time, and even getting unstuck means you're breaking even for a long time of play.

Online players can make the adjustment, but it takes awhile. It often takes a lot longer than they think. Yes, they have a lot of experience seeing hands, thousands of hands in a shorter period of time. Experience can be compressed. But, the difference in live versus online can't be compressed by playing online. I think I can speak from experience here. I played hundreds of thousands of hands before I came out here. It took me a lot of hours playing in the poker rooms to make the adjustment.

There's an old saying: Do you have ten years experience, or one year ten times?

Online play tends more toward the latter than the former.

You can believe it or not. Doesn't matter. Online players may be good card players, but live players are better POKER players. This isn't only my opinion, but the opinion of most of the players I've talked to who do both.

(I wouldn't have believed there was such a difference, either, until I'd been doing it for quite awhile.)

You are obv right that FR is boring. Hell, its boring 8-tabling on Stars fast tables. If I was forced to play live, I would either

1) play short handed
2) study for my law degree while playing
3) multitable on a laptop while playing (this is actually allowed at Tallinn Casino in Estonia, Eastern Europe, and many of the pros there do it)

All you live players are holding physical tells in the highest regard and say that they are an important part of your game. From your experiences this is obviously true else you wouldn't be saying this.
But, why have a lot of the live pros, Devilifish, Negreanu and others (I think Hellmuth as well) have said in the past than these tells are overrated and they themselves look toward betting patterns as their main source of tell. Are these players trying to hide something or have another agenda by saying this?
Not trying to diss live players here, just trying to understand why these pros say this.

Well I figure there are quite a few more fish with tells and much less rational betting patterns at a typical 2-5 live game than in the games Negreanu&friends play.