Evaluating Sites/Levels/Games and Tables.

[MCS]

hi bison i read you're essay and i was thinking i understand that it's good to have the button. but i play 2/4, are you saying i should play the 15/30 at ub? lol it seems like the 2/4 would be easier. tia

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Seriously, thanks. I have heard people make conflicting claims about position relative to other specific players, and this was way better than any response I ever thought of.

[cpk]

1. Even if you can loosen up for a juicy game, you are still going to play most of your hands from late position where you will play after everyone except the 2-3 players immediately towards your left--and you will play after them on all other rounds. Therefore, for most cases this is irrelevant.

2. The proper strategy for determining where to sit is not whether your opponents are loose or tight, but how aggressive they are. Inopportune raises wreck marginal hands, not failure to grab enough attention from the fish.

3. VPIP >30 players are only rarely blown off their blinds for 1 raise, especially if there are 4+ players in the pot. They play 1 hand out of 3 regardless of whether it's been raised--what makes you think they're going to lay down when the pot is huge and they have a down payment?

4. Say you have 4 VPIP >30 players (necessary to consider a game "good" at low limits, IMO). If you have the 4 VPIP >30 players to your left, you can count on at least 1 of them playing 75% of the time and at least 2 of them playing 35% of the time. This is enough to cover those situations where you would want to play marginal hands UTG (where you're not going to know what anyone is going to do anyway). If you raise VPIP to 40, these numbers go up to 87% and 52%.

5. In loose games, limping attracts limping. If you limp with marginal hands, you will induce people who might fold to limp. There's no way they can do this if their hands are in the muck already.

6. Postflop, it's better to be out of position against bad players than it is against good players.

7. While 6x VPIP >50 games are hard to find online, they are nearly ubiquitous in the B&M world. Otherwise, there would be nearly no point in playing B&M.

[Fnord]

Re-reading this, I think it's perpendicular to the "what games are the softest" discussion. However, it does spell out seat selection as being a big factor in success. Probably more-so than stuff like raise/call/fold AJ/KQ UTG which has been beaten to death.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed on playing hands, but I picked up on this pretty quickly. Then I later came to the stunning realization of just how juicy a short-handed full table is compared to the 6-max tables. I think it's stuff like this that makes me a consistant winner.

Now, we could go onto the techincal details of picking the right chair when you don't have much information to go on, but I think we've said enough already [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Fnord]

[ QUOTE ]
3. VPIP >30 players are only rarely blown off their blinds for 1 raise, especially if there are 4+ players in the pot. They play 1 hand out of 3 regardless of whether it's been raised--what makes you think they're going to lay down when the pot is huge and they have a down payment?


[/ QUOTE ]

Yet another reason to have the tight player(s) to my left. I like dead money in the pot with just bad players remaining. Many of the 4+ table crowd aren't terribly inclined to play slim holdings from their blinds. They have bigger things to think about in their other 7 windows...

[Josh.]

you should've waited for the February 2+2 magazine to put this out, fish. this is some quality stuff

[Aaron W.]

Up to this point, I have never practiced game selection. I just sign on and play at the first available table. My theory has been (and still is) that at this level, there are more than enough bad players to make the all these games beatable (this level for me = $1/2, but in general terms I'm referring to online small stakes games). Some will be harder than others, but none will require world-class skills to beat. Since my primary interest is not profit (as my financial well being does not rest on my poker playing) but simply to play the game better, I *believe* that it's helpful for me to sit in a variety of games to gain a variety of experiences, even if it would mean that I don't move up levels quite so fast. After all, why risk more money at a $5-10 game for experience when I can experience a similar game at $1-2 (for example).

[For reference, I also don't multi-table, which means I actually get to pay enough attention to notice the differences.]

So this leads me to my questions:
1) Does my hypothesis seem correct? (Enough bad players exist to make all tables beatable.)
2) Is the conclusion about gaining experience correct? (For the sake of learning to play better, it's fine to sit at one level rather than trying to race up to higher stakes)
3) Are there potential pitfalls that I should make myself aware of as I continue along this path of not choosing games? (Staying within a particular level and within financial tolerances -- as there are obvious pitfalls of chasing higher cost games)

Thanks.

[bisonbison]

you should've waited for the February 2+2 magazine to put this out, fish. this is some quality stuff

I'm not in it for the money. I'm in it for the arguing with people who are wrong wrong wrong.

[Hoi Polloi]

Thanks, bison. Great post.

[Fnord]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Does my hypothesis seem correct? (Enough bad players exist to make all tables beatable.)


[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe, depends on the playing conditions and how your style feeds into that.


[ QUOTE ]

3) Are there potential pitfalls that I should make myself aware of as I continue along this path of not choosing games? (Staying within a particular level and within financial tolerances -- as there are obvious pitfalls of chasing higher cost games)


[/ QUOTE ]

An important part of "choosing" good games is leaving bad ones.

[krishan]

This is the strongest, most convincing argument for relative position to fishes and tighties being the most important factor in table selection you have written. You should submit to the Feb magazine. Not for money, but because this is a post that everyone can benefit from reading. From micros, to shorthand, etc...

I liked it a lot.

Krishan