Table selection

Table selection is one of the most important factors in successful poker strategy, yet among many players it’s also one of the most neglected. If you are interested in plugging leaks in your game, this is a great place to start.

The key is often simply to have a little humility. Only the very best players can claim to have an edge over nearly every table they sit down at, and the majority of us have to be honest about our poker abilities. Unless your name is Phil Ivey or Patrik Antonius, you almost certainly need to be selective about who you play.

The online game is also getting tougher, which means good table selection is even more important. The fish of five years ago have been replaced with an altogether stronger breed who have read Harrington, joined CardRunners and subscribed to InsidePoker. No longer can you just sit down at a table and expect to find a few soft targets.

With that in mind we need to make sure we tackle the problem of finding an edge in a systematic manner. To do that we have to go back to basics a little and remind ourselves how we make money in poker. One of the real differences between winners and losers is that winners make more from their winning hands (for example making more thin value bets when marginally ahead) and lose less from their losing hands (folding in marginally losing spots more often).

When you apply this logic to table selection it means you need to look for the most exploitable players you can find. Although you might be able to comfortably beat a table of solid regulars for a small amount by stealing more and picking up more orphan pots than they do, you are not maximising your profitability if there are softer games available.

Remember, poker is not like the lottery – there is always a skill edge that some players will have over others. We win more by hunting down tables where we can maximise our edge.

POKER SOFTWARE

Before even thinking about table selection you should probably consider investing in some sort of data-mining software. There are plenty of good programs available and internet forums will give the best feedback on which to use for your chosen site. You should already be using some sort of hand analysis software such as PokerOffice or PokerTracker, but you need to use this in conjunction with good table-selection tools (such as Spadeit EyePoker on the iPoker network). Of course you can practise good table selection without these programs, but they speed up and aid the process.

On the whole, lobby stats are pretty useless as a guide to where to play. The statistics get skewed by the occasional huge pot and don’t give an accurate reflection of the play at the table. For example the table could have been playing three-handed for ages then suddenly filled up. If you have no other information available to you, use your buddy list and open up a few tables to get an idea of whether they present a good opportunity.

Often it’s best to let a program like EyePoker run for a couple of hours to give you the lowdown on what is happening on your site. It will monitor the activity on several tables at once and display the statistics on players based on the information you have in your PokerTracker database. This is a more effective way of analysing the tables at any particular moment than laboriously searching through tables one at a time, looking for the biggest fish. Bear in mind, however, that at any stage a game can suddenly become hugely profitable – some of the most profitable sessions can occur when some random donator joins after winning a tournament or getting a big bonus.

FISH RANKINGS

Your ultimate aim in selecting a table is finding full stacks of chips in the hands of incompetent players. Here are the basic opponent types ranked in terms of profitability…

1 LOOSE-PASSIVE FISH

Your primary goal in table selection is to find fish – players that play too many hands regardless of position and play them badly. These are the key to profitability and should make up the bulk of your income. Ideally you want them to be on the passive side too. For those of you with a more solid and conventional game, these players are the most exploitable out there. They are so valuable that finding a table with one (or if you are especially lucky, two) gives you a huge edge over the table.

If you use tracking software, you should be familiar with the term VPIP, a measure of an opponent’s willingness to get involved in the action (a loose acronym for ‘Voluntarily Putting money Into the Pot’). I usually identify fish as players with a VPIP of 35% or more, but 30% is also very high and fair game. Preferably you want them to be calling stations with a low aggression factor, but it’s not an enormous problem if they are aggressive as long as you have a positional advantage.

2 LOSING REGULARS

The secondary aim of analysing tables is to find losing regulars with big holes in their game that you know you can exploit. Most commonly, these are opponents who play in an especially simple, predictable style, for example only ever slow-playing and check-raising big hands post-flop. That sort of leak, once you have pinned it as 100% reliable, is pure gold. Remember, money saved is the same as money earned.

Regulars that massively multi-table and play in a very robotic manner can be juicy too, especially if they are on the weak/tight side. These TAG fish will make up 50-60% of the player pools on the big poker sites. Remember, loose players look for an excuse to call, whereas tight players are looking to find a reason to fold.

Simple adjustments to your game can turn these players into mini ATMs as you just make their life difficult by check-raising their continuation bets and floating them mercilessly in position. They are not as exploitable as fish of course, but you cannot always find a whale online any more.

3 WINNING REGULARS

Bear in mind when selecting tables that you want to consciously avoid good winning players, or those that are tricky. Poker is not an ego contest (for most of us) and the aim of the game is making money, not getting into bluff wars with a fellow winning regular. Try to avoid tables with one crazy guy and four other competent players, as the dynamic gets twisted and can often result in innocent casualties as everyone battles for the donkey’s dough.

WAITING GAME

Once you have selected a decent table, look at the waiting list and bear in mind that unless you are very close to next in line to join, you are probably too late. Add yourself anyway if the list is only four or five players long, but more often than not other players are doing exactly the same as you and the table make-up will have changed dramatically by the time you get there. The fish will have been replaced by nits who have been doing their homework and you can kiss goodbye to a nice easy session.