Live Poker Table Selection

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Table selection in poker means finding the games with the recreational players and fish in them. These players play way too many hands (VPIP of 40%+), call too much and lose all their money in the long run. You need to table select to find these players.

  1. If you are looking to become a winning poker player one of the most important sills you need to learn is how to use proper game selection. Because as they say: it doesn’t matter if you are the 10th best poker player in the world if the 9 other players in the table are better than you.
  2. When you take a seat at one of the 50 tables in The Poker Room, don’t be surprised to see poker champions playing. The 24/7 buzz, the amenities, the stylish setting, the daily tournaments at every level and the vast selection of games have made The Poker Room at Live! Casino & Hotel one of the nation’s biggest. And one of the best.

Guide to finding the softest tables to improve your win rate

If you want to improve your win rate at poker, there are thousands of resources that you’ll be able to find online – including forums, poker training sites, YouTube channels, poker information websites or more. However while all of these will spend a long time focusing on your strategy while at the tables, you’ll not find so much information in regards to selecting the right tables – and this actually represents one of the biggest factors in your win rate.

In this article I look at table selection across both sit n go’s and cash games. Starting with the sit n go’s I explain exactly how table selection can affect your win rate, and give some advice on how you’ll find softer games. I then move on to cash games and detail some of the specific methods you’ll be able to use when choosing a cash table.

Sit n Go Table Selection

There is one over-riding factor when choosing a table when playing poker – you want to play against bad players! In poker there is no need to be a hero by trying to beat the best. The aim of poker is to make money, and you’ll make money by playing against bad players, so this should always be your aim.

In sit n go’s there are two ways you can actually achieve this successfully.

The first way is to choose a site which has the weakest player base. Many people will immediately head to PokerStars, this due to the ease of multi-tabling and the amount of traffic at the site, but this also means that many good players play at the site, loading up a number of tables at a time, meaning that the games are crowded with these regular players. Why not play at a site where the games are nowhere near as tough? One way to ensure this is by playing at a site which has a sportsbook alongside the poker site – this will lead to many recreational players heading to the poker site after having a win at the horses, greyhounds, football or any other sports.

Of course, if you do play at a dedicated poker site, there are ways to find softer games. Get to know who the regular players are and avoid them. Some sites will have a number of tables registering at a time, so take a look for those players who are registered in all of them – these are the regulars you want to avoid. Many of these players can be avoided, because when they have their set number of tables going, they won’t be registering again for a while, so look for those spots when the regulars are not in town.

Consider, if you find yourself at a table of nine players where six or more of the other players are solid regulars, there is probably no profit to be had at all. Finding a table with just 2/3 regulars with the rest made up of average players or solid losers, will see your profit margin increase greatly.

Live Poker Table Selection Center

Here is a challenge, put some tables from PokerStars and 888 Poker side-by-side (the same buy-in level) and see for yourself how much looser / crazier the 888 games are - it will be a 'face-palm' moment, and your bankroll will benefit. See those soft 888 games at www.888poker.com now.

Table

Poker Cash Games Table Selection

When playing cash poker, you’ll still want to play at a site with a weaker player base, so head to those linked with a sportsbook. However there are some other methods you can use in choosing a good table.

Live Poker Table Selection

The first method you can use is to look at two stats that are usually shown in the lobby of cash games – these being the average pot size and the Players/Flop. In both cases, the larger these numbers are, the looser the games will be and in general you’ll want to be heading for these tables. Using this method won’t work so well at a larger poker site, as there will be many players all trying to join the same tables – making them difficult to come by on occasions.

The other method you can use is by colour coding your opponents. Every time you meet an opponent at a table, give them a colour code based on how they play (the majority of sites offer this option). You can make this is simple or as complicated as you want, but you’ll want to quickly identify who the good and bad players are. Having done this over and over, you’ll quickly be able to spot the tables that are crowded with the good players and also pick out those fish quickly and easily. This will give you an edge over the players who are simply using the numbers to table select, especially if a fish has just sat down.

Smaller Poker Networks, particularly those which are primarily sports betting sites which also offer poker games are the ones to look for. Once again, the key factor is that you avoid the pros and play where the recreational players do.

Table Selection in Online Poker Overview

Table selection is huge when playing online poker – if you’re meeting good players all the time, you’ll never make progress, as you’ll never have that edge. Look for those bad players who will give you money more often than not, and your win-rate will look much more impressive.

Quick Note for US Readers

The same principles of course apply, though the offshore sites are smaller than the international giants. If you are a recreational player looking for soft games, then Bovada is my easy number one pick. They are 'anti-grinder' (prevent multi-tabling and many of the grinder tools), which keeps their tables super-soft. This has grown to be the biggest US poker site as a result. Check out www.bovada.lv - and see the easy games for youself!

More Great Online Poker Guides and Articles:

  • Easiest Online Poker Bonuses (includes US / non-US Options)

Poker

Almost as important as selecting the most suitable online poker room, is the selection of the best poker table to play at. Once again the profitability of each table can vary massively, so is it just luck whether or not you pick the most profitable?

Well no, there is a logic behind it and in this lesson we are going to look at how to select the most profitable cash game table from the lobby.

What are we Looking for?

We’re looking for the fish, plain and simple. We’re looking for any signs of bad players who play too many hands against the odds and chase, hoping to hit cards on the flop, turn or river to make their hand irrespective of how unlikely it is to happen.

Now in a live casino the only way to do this would be to stand and observe the tables and spot the one with the players who are chasing.

Luckily with online poker this guesswork and time consuming observation is taken away from us, as we are given table statistics in the lobby for each and every table, which is extremely helpful seeing as there can be hundreds of tables to choose from.

So How do we Choose the Most Profitable Table?

The first step is to ensure that you are looking at the right tables. In the first stage of this course and the Poker Bankroll Challenge you will be playing at the 5cent / 10cent stake level and throughout this course you will be focused on the No Limit Texas Holdem ring (cash) game tables.

So, from the lobby, make sure you are looking at the ring game tables, and click on the Holdem tab and select the No Limit button just underneath. The tables we are looking for are the 5c/10c tables with 9 players on a table. Throughout this course we will be playing on full tables of 9 or 10 player tables so you can ignore the short-handed (6 player) tables for now.

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Live Poker Table Selection Guide

As you look at the tables available you will see a number of statistics here, lets have a quick look at what they mean:

  • Players – The number of players sat at the table and the maximum players, eg: “7/9” = 7 players sat down with 2 spare seats.
  • Stakes – The size of the small blind and big blind and subsequent bets, eg: “5c/10c” = small blind is 5 cents ($0.05) and the big blind is 10 cents ($0.10).
  • Limit – The type of Poker Betting Limit of the game being played, either No Limit, Pot Limit or Limit (Fixed) – eg: “NL” = No Limit
  • Type – Poker room specific which will show icons for the type of game it is, for example there might be an icon for webcam poker tables, usually there is a legend explaining the icons at the bottom of the lobby.
  • Average Pot – Self explanatory, keeps track of all the winning pot values and provides an average pot size as a statistic for the table.
  • Players / Flop – The average number of players who see the flop, ie: the players that are not folding before the flop and at least call the pre flop bet and see the cards on the flop, eg: “45%” = at a full 9 man table this would indicate that on average 4 players (9 x 45%) see each flop, meaning there is at least 4 big blinds in most pots.
  • Hands / Hour – This is an indication of the speed of the table and displays the average number of hands that are dealt in each hour, the higher the number the faster the table is acting and getting through more hands per hour.
  • Wait – If a table is full then you can sign up for the waiting list for that table, as a player leaves, that seat is offered to the next person on the waiting list. This statistic shows you how many people are currently on the Waiting List.

Players per Flop: The Fish-o-meter

The statistic we are interested in to start with is the % of players seeing the Flop, or the Players per Flop column. What this number is telling us is the average % of the players at the table who see each flop. This is our Fish-o-meter as the basic rule of thumb here is that the higher this number is, then the more fish (bad players) the table contains.

Why? Because as you have already learnt, fish chase bad cards, they play hands that they should just fold, and hence you get more players trying to play each flop without any kind of proper hand selection.

Live Poker Table Selection Board

A table with a lower percentage would indicate better players, so if you saw a table with 5% then this table has a lot of better players, who play hands selectively before the flop and don’t play with hands they shouldn’t.

Center

As you can see from the screenshot above, there is one table that stands out above the others in the list with a 45% players/flop statistic – this is a really really good table to sit down at, and I would be getting my name on that table’s waiting list as soon as possible.

Live Poker Table Selection Program

What we are looking for is tables with a Plrs/Flop % higher than 20%. If you can get greater than 30% then that is even better. The higher the better and the more fishy table.

Live Poker Table Selection

The screenshot above was taken at 888 Poker and as you can see there are lots of tables above 20% and some over 30%, culminating with that fish stinking 45% table. It’s a similar case at Bovada, and just goes to backup the results of our tests that there are lots of inexperienced players at these two sites where we can make profit.