I know a lot of decent poker players that get frustrated with online poker.

Last night before a regular local tournament and had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine. He's had a bit of success in online tournaments and he regularly beats low limit cash games at the casino. He loses in cash games online. These three statements, to him, mean that online cash games are somehow broken. On top of that, he watched an episode of a poker show where Doyle Brunsen is playing a cash game with some other pros and asks, "Does anyone here know ANYONE who wins online?" To which they all replied no.

He tells me about all the bad beats he endures, etc. I ask him about his bankroll and he waves his hands dismissively. (I guess you wouldn't need a bankroll if you never took beats) So he's "not saying it's rigged, but there's something wrong with it." I proceeded to make fun of him every chance I got and every time someone took a bad beat. My intention was to get him to stop rationalizing his losses as something external to him.

The worst part about it is that he played blackjack for a living years ago. Card counting and online poker are twins, separated at birth. You design a system to beat the game you're in. The rules change (or the players in the case of poker) and you adjust your system. You practice so much that you're almost subconscious about all but the most difficult decisions (if you practice counting, it goes from really hard to incredibly easy rather quickly, same for preflop hand selection, which flops are good for cbets, etc.). The most glaring similarity is variance. The best card counters have a 1.5% edge over the house. That means if they play 100 hands at $100, that's a total of $10,000 x .015 = $150 per 100 bets on average. In any given session, they'll be down or up thousands, but over the course of a month, playing 5-6 hours 5 days per week, it should average out to somewhere around $150/100 hands. (to put it in perspective, accepted bankroll for $100 average bet would be around $45,000)

He should be able to understand the variance. He should understand that a poker game, especially online, is a system. He refuses to accept it.

I know a lot of people who should be able to win online but refuse to. Why do live players suck online?