I always think that players with certain personality sets are attracted to certain types of poker games. To quote one example of what I mean then consider the following. A player drives 30 miles to their local casino to play poker. When they get there they only see one available game in the card room and they wait for a seat in that game and eventually they take a seat. This is a small casino with a mid-size card room that doesn’t see an awful lot of action unless the weekly poker tournament is in full swing.
Essentially then this player has sat in this poker game through a lack of choice. So if this game is full-ring then they could be playing full-ring even though they prefer shorter handed play. Likewise they could be playing if this game were six handed even though they preferred full-ring. However the situation is vastly different in large online card rooms with lots of active games at many different forms of poker.
If a player sits down in a full-ring game online then they have purposely selected that game above anything else. So what can we make of this? Well firstly it is a strong indication that this player prefers games with relatively low blind pressure compared to six handed or heads up play. It is also an indication that this player probably has a game more suited to full-ring than six handed play as well.
Whereas we could not tell anything with regards the mindset of the player who sat down in the live poker game, in this situation then we clearly have something to go on. This is where specialising in one form of poker is ideal as you get a good feel for the average ranges of the players and what types of hands they get all in with. These are different from six handed play to full-ring and they need to be for obvious reasons.
But I do think that a player who selects games with low blind pressure has a more defensive and cautious style of game than a player who plays six handed. A true six handed player has to be prepared to play five and even four handed when players sit out or drop out but five and four handed play would horrify many full-ring players who would quickly leave the table.
In no way however am I saying that full-ring game players are cautious tight playing rocks compared to their six handed counterparts. All that I am saying here is that they are more defensive minded when it comes to preferences regarding blind pressure and other factors. The average hand that a player will get all in with for their entire stack in a deep stack situation will be vastly different in full-ring. In six handed play then it would be often correct to get all in for 100 big blinds with a hand like J-J pre-flop. In full-ring this is rarely correct and hands like Q-Q are too weak to get all-in for 100 big blinds pre-flop.