Table Selection

[moafreddie]

Someone Talk to me a little........ about table selection, how important is it?? What would you look for on a table considering all players are unkown, big pots loose action???

What programs are out there??

[DavidC]

Digest posts? Maybe in the micros digests too? Not sure.

Look for bad players and sit on their left. End of thread.

[MustangJack]

If the site that you are playing at allows data mining. datamine for 20 mins before you want to start, plug the hands into PT, set a filter for players whose VPIP >50 and PFR <15 and you will find the fishies.

[Oink]

1) Site selection.

This is equally important. You know what to look for: fish, rake, rb, bonii and vip. Playing 10/20 and below without a good rakeback deal or a good VIP program is retarded.


2) Table selection.

Yeah, fish to your left. If the rake is an issue, i.e 5/T and below, only sit at tables with at least 1 moron, say 50/10, or 2 bad players, say 30/10 or 50/30. Try having the tight players to your left and loose players to your right. Be careful to look for bad LAGs as opposed to good LAGs. Plenty of 40/30 types will own you postflop and some of them will spew. You def dont want a good LAG to your left. He wont let you steal blinds and he wont let you isolate the fish. He will own you postflop b/c of position and in general make it hard for you to win money unless the rest of the table is bad.

I see a lot of TAGs at Party and AP that hardly ever table select and seat select. Its a mystery to me how they win money...

There are several programs out there. I use spadeeye, which is great. It works for party, stars, FT, AP and others. Besides datamining on party and FT, it scans the tables at a given level and finds the fish for you.

[Saikkonen]

table selection:

Importance:
Very important. It is just like any other sport. You can find opposition you can beat if you look closely, but you will probably not develop your skills so much. So there is a difference between selecting and not selecting. There simply has to be....


Before you can select a good table you should do your homework by finding reads. You should target some weak loose players and many people actually focus a lot on preflopstandards but somehow neglected is aggressive vs. passive players. I love playing against passive opposition because when they raise I can be pretty sure that I may be behind and then I have to start counting outs.

On the other hand if tricky players makes you nervous or makes you tilt then avoid them. You should always know yourself and then choose your opposition from what YOU find comfortable.

[johnnyrocket]

table selection is huge, it is the difference between winning easy or having to really grind it out, i have tons of PT hands so I load up all my tables and PokerAce and scout out the tables then sit in.

[bobhalford]

I throw on a few tables and see if there is any openlimping, overlimping, cold calling preflop (or elsewhere), or pots with 3+ players seeing the turn.

If I see a lot of raising, I lose interest in the game, even though the average pot size might be larger than other tables. I don't want to face difficult decisions by getting raised more often than average.

Loose passive games. When you are running well in 1 or more of these games online, it is a great feeling. You have found a place online where people are glad to pay you off and you don't have to think too hard about very much. When they raise, you will have a good idea where you stand, because you can't call without a very good hand.

[chesterfieldking]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Site selection.

This is equally important. You know what to look for: fish, rake, rb, bonii and vip. Playing 10/20 and below without a good rakeback deal or a good VIP program is retarded.


[/ QUOTE ]

This probably gets overlooked way more than it should. I think good site selection is a prequisite for good table selection. It will be near impossible to have adequate table slection if you are playing on the wrong sites.

[kaby]

And what are the wrong sites? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

I hardly table or seat select btw, I'll get up if it's 29/16 but i'm playing 32/12 tables or smth quite regurarly (at 1/2 )

I'm still learning the game, making money is secondary atm, so I have no prob putting myself in hard and -ev situations sometimes.

[Oink]

[ QUOTE ]
And what are the wrong sites?


[/ QUOTE ]

The sites where your expected winrate/hour is the highest.

In PT's summary tab you can find the rake measured in BB/100 at a given stake for each site. (The aggregate winrate for all players). Alternatively you should at least be aware of the rake schedule at the sites you play, these can be found in the poker client or at the site's webpage.

In the game notes tab you can find your MGR and thus find your rb measured in BB/100 for those sites that use the dealt method. If the site uses one of the contributed methods its a little more tricky, but if your affiliate tracks your MGR on a daily basis you can compare to the number of hands played in PT and estimate your rb in BB/100.

Find out how the site pays out bonii and how they pay out VIP points. Again, using the game notes tab you can estimate the value of bonii+VIP.

I use to do all this. These are old numbers (From last year) for various 1/2 games. (Plz note that they are outdated). The figure is total cost of playing, or "rb + bonii+ vip - rake" in BB/100 and numbers are based on a DB with +100k hands.

AP -0.3 (Elite member)
Stars -2.3 (Platinum)
Crypto -0.7
UB 0.5
Pokerroom -1.9
Party -3.1
Pacific -3.5
FT -1.1

The numbers are way outdated, but the point remains the same. There was a HUGE 2.8BB/100 difference between UB 1/2 games and stars 1/2 (This is not the case anymore as UB has changed RB and bonii + other promos). Equivalent differences with the structures today can prolly be found. So dont just look for a site with a lot of fish, consider the other factors as well.

BTW, playing stars 2/4 and below without a reasonable chance of hitting SN is still retarded.

Sorry for the long boring post