There is a widespread misunderstanding that in order to win money at poker you need to be good at it. You don’t – you simply need to be better than the people you’re playing with. Poker is a relative game. If you make better decisions than your opponents you win – it doesn’t matter if you’re all world-class or all beginners. This is why game selection or table selection is so incredibly important to your profits.
Let’s say you’re a semi-regular winning $0.50/$1 cash-game player. If you sit down at a six-max table with three other winning regulars this table may be a breakeven proposition for you. If you’re worse than the average player this could well be a losing situation for you. However, if you find a table with only one other regular and three loose-passive casual players you would expect to have a big edge. You’re the same player – the limit and game and the site are all the same – but your expected results are completely different. Sound simple? It is!
Practise what you preach
If you asked most players with a decent familiarity of the game they’d be able to tell you exactly what you’ve just read, but it’s unlikely they practise good table selection. In fact, most players don’t practise good game selection. In most cases it’s because they don’t realise just how important it is, but there’s also a huge factor that when you log on you just want to play. It’s a bit like brushing your teeth at night – everyone knows they should do a thorough job, that it doesn’t really take that long and is good for your long-term results, but most people just can’t be bothered with the extra hassle. If that describes you, change your mindset and take time over picking your tables. Your reward in cold hard cash will make it well worth it.
The importance of game selection was summed up in a quote about legendary player Eric Drache: ‘He is undoubtedly the sixth-best stud player in the world – unfortunately for him he regularly plays against the best five.’ Remember to leave your ego in the lobby and to scope out the players you have an edge against.
Picking a winning table
So, we all agree game selection is vitally important, but how do you actually practise it? It can be difficult to know how a table is playing before you join the action, but there are certain things to look for to help you choose between tables to ensure you always have an edge.
History
The first thing to look for is players you’ve played with before. Not only is it far easier to play against players once you know their tendencies, but it is also the simplest way to discern whether there are good or weak players at a given table. Obviously it’s critical to make notes on players as you play and use a simple system to flag whether they’re players to avoid or ones to seek out (the PKR icons tab is an easy and fast mechanism). Make sure you’ve scoured the tables at your limit for known fish – players you’ve played with before who are just giving their money away. These guys often don’t play for long and it’s your duty as a winning player to get in there and get your fair share of the spoils.
Lobby filtering
Use the ‘AVG. POT’ stat in the lobby to identify more profitable tables. This figure gives you a rough guide as to how loose a table is playing. The higher the figure the looser it is and the more likely it is you should be willing to play it. This is not an absolute rule but if there are big pots banging around there’s potentially a lot of money to be made and quickly. Make sure you take the time to work out the dynamic and see who is responsible for the inflated pots – big calling stations, hyper-aggressive LAGs or both – before you start swinging too much!
Multi-grinders
Beware of players who are sitting at multiple tables with stacks of the maximum buy-in or higher. There’s a high chance a player like this is a regular winning player and won’t be fun to play against. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule – plenty of losing players can have a good night on several tables – but it’s a good clue. One of these players at a table isn’t too much of a problem if there are also some tasty soft spots, but three or four of them probably makes the game a bad proposition.
Stack sizes
Pay attention to stack sizes on the tables you’re considering jumping into. Shorter than maximum buy-in stacks usually means casual or poor players. This can be good for your expected value but beware that short-stacked players can narrow the skill gap between you and them. They can also be a huge pain to play against and reduce your win-rate if they shove effectively.
The winds of change
Of course, good game selection means does not end with picking good tables when you first log on. Games tend to evolve over time, and just because a table is looking tasty when you sit down does not mean it’s still a good game after a couple of personnel changes. As such, you should continually monitor and manage your table selection during every session of play.
Don’t let your first impressions about a table cloud your judgement. Stats in the lobby and secondary clues about your opponents may indicate it’s a good table to get involved in but these indications can be misleading. For example, if there is a lot of three-betting (reraising preflop) and aggression after the flop, you may be facing some tough opponents and you may have more difficulty finding good spots. It may be that the lobby showed this was a loose table with large average pots, but this may have been due to an unusual run of big hands or a couple of competent loose-aggressive players that you’d rather not be facing. Conversely, if you see a lot of preflop limping or cold-calling of raises and passive play after the flop this table may be all your Christmases come at once.
Getting in the hot (or cold) seat
The seat that becomes available at a table will have a huge effect on whether this is a positive expectation spot for you or not. If there’s a huge fish at a given table and you are lucky enough to get a seat to his immediate left you can raise his limps and reraise his raises to isolate him and have him dancing to your positional tune for the rest of the hand. However, if there are two good aggressive players between you and him you’ll rarely get the opportunity to contest pots, as they’ll have the same idea as you. This will make this table much less profitable (unless you take your game to the next level and start four-betting them light!).
It’s vital to be honest about how good your spot is and to remember that games constantly evolve. What may have been a great table at the start of a session can switch if the donators are replaced by competent regulars. You should also be aware that the tables you elected not to play are also changing. At any point a bad player may sit down on a couple of tables or win a big pot and have a huge stack that’s just waiting to be swiped. Check the lobby intermittently to make sure you’re not missing opportunities to increase your profit.