don't get why there is any debate here whatsoever.
A winning online tournament player at avg buyin of $200 will absolutely destroy $200 buyin tournaments live - if they even bothered to play them with their horrid structures. TH reverse is likely true as well. smoone with a slight win rate in $200 live tournies is probably going to get lit on fire trying to play $200 freezouts on the net.
Same with cash. A winning live 5/10 player will lose the house car and dog at 5/10 online. Good luck to them even beating .50/$1 online over time.
Internet play is just that much better at the lower buyin levels for all the many reasons stated in this thread.
-Multitabling regulars
-Huds leveling the playing field
-online players generally seeing 10-1000x the number of hands that people who only play live have seen
-online schooled players are so much better quantitalvely and fundamentally so much more sound it's not even close. Hand volume, training sites, 2+2 etc... not to mention such a high % of young people with nothing but time to dedicate to this and soak it up.
-and lastly, the online players are making very quick transitions to the live tables these days... and its much easier then the other way round. Just look how many of the
wsop and WPT Final tables are full of kids 21-25. It's because they are that much better players from he online training. And it's only going to increase as a trend.