Live Poker Table Selection
- Game Selection in Live Poker Game selection will always be one of the easiest ways to increase your earnings in poker. With live poker, game selection will require more time and effort. In online games, players are able to easily scan through lists of games in a matter of seconds.
- There are some tables you want to avoid like a red plague, or move to another table ASAP. Little is written about table selection. Yet, I see players changing tables quite often in cash games.
Bravo Poker Live is the world's most convenient, secure and low cost poker event registration portal on the web. More than just a booking site, Bravo Poker Live communicates directly with our industry leading poker room management system installed in leading casinos across the world - giving you registration access like never before! Poker Tournament Strategy Starting Hands Poker Math Poker Skills Poker Psychology PokerStars and Poker Boom Stories Site Map “Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.” - Saul Bellow One of the least controversial winning poker concepts is the idea that game selection is important.
Exercising good game selection will mean different things to different people. For instance, unlike a successful part-time player who might be forced by other responsibilities to live in a place that only offers a handful of games to choose from, if you are a professional player looking for the best games to make a living from, you should be looking at the whole planet, or at least your native country, when you consider game selection. What locality best fits your temperament, bankroll, and game preference?
Las Vegas usually takes the house rake via a percentage of every pot, leading to tighter games; California games either have a button drop or time collection which unlike the Las Vegas rake spreads the cost equally to all the players, and leads to much looser, more aggressive games.
The weakest Las Vegas players generally are the much-maligned “tourists” who often are unable to play poker regularly so they tend to give more, and get in more, action than the game merits. In great contrast, the weakest Los Angeles players tend to play regularly and have a whole array of tricks and abilities that the tourists don’t have -- but have holes in their games you can drive a truck through.
The weakness of your opposition is the critical thing to exploit, but “weak” players can be tremendously different in their weaknesses. I believe that overall the weakest players play Hold'em. (It’s no coincidence that Hold'em is by far the most popular game.) However, Hold'em as a game protects weaker players much better than Omaha or Stud. Weak players have zero chance in Omaha, and not much of one in Stud, but weak players (loose weak players at least) have a fighting chance in Hold'em. It shouldn't be hard to see that a player who always plays 40/60 underdogs does have a chance to win over a reasonable period of time, or at least to not lose much. But a player playing games where he is a 10/90 or even 25/75 dog, this player is dead as a doornail. So, even though the weakest players might be playing Hold'em, the correct game selection might be to choose an Omaha or Stud game.
On the other hand, Omaha or Stud games containing mostly very good players are just awful. With its higher greater random luck, Hold'em games with decent players can still be profitable for very good players. A very good player has more to work with to “make things happen” in Hold'em.
Poker players best suited to winning are ones who can walk into a casino and conceivably play any game in the club. They select the best. Of course, most players are limited in their choices by bankroll considerations. We might also choose to limit ourselves temperamentally, for example, maybe forgoing a better Omaha game for a Hold'em game because Omaha is more routine. However, decisions like this should be conscious. If you select a game that isn’t the best $-choice, you better have a good reason.
It’s an interesting thing that game selection (and its cousin, table selection) really becomes critical when you have a lot of choices and when you have very few. Obviously if you only have two games to choose from, if one is far better than the other, you are making a huge error by not getting in the better game. On the other hand, playing online poker, you can have 100 games at your fingertips. You don’t need to find the single best game out of that 100, but it is a major mistake if you don’t find yourself an excellent game among the choices.
Especially if you are a fairly experienced player, don’t trivialize game selection. Ask yourself why you are playing the game you are playing in, at the table you are playing at. Look around the cardroom, or the online lobby, and find the Live Poker Table Selection Program
next best game that you could be in, and ask yourself why you are choosing the game you are in over that other game. Since it is a basic, critical-to-success skill, constantly challenge yourself on game selection. Don't just take it for granted.Also see Poker Experts
In a live poker room, it’s as simple as standing behind the tables for a moment to know which table comprises of wack players and which is dominated by pros. In contrast, you can’t do this in an online poker room. With players coming from all corners of the world, it’s almost impossible to tell who is good and who is bad just by staring at their usernames or avatars.
This represents a major challenge for any poker player because unbeknown to you, you might be joining a table that’s already dominated by players who’re way out of your league.
To win at any poker table, the easiest way is to play against guys that aren’t as good as you, or at least, guys that are on your level. So, when you want to join an online table, this should be your target.
But without a foresight about the guys on the tables, how will you know which table to join and which to run from? Hard for anyone to know!
Luckily for you, we’ve got some tips to help you make your choice.
First step to choosing the most profitable table
First and foremost, when you join a poker site like dewapoker poker88, the first thing you should keep your eyes out for should be the following table defining statistics. A good understanding of what each stat represents can help you make your table choice appropriately.
• Stakes: What’s the size of the small and big blind, as well as the size of the subsequent bets that follow them? For example, in a 5c/10c table, this should be: small blind = 5 cents ($0.05), big blind = 10 cents ($0.1).
• Players: Maximum allowable number of players at the table, as well as the current number of players seated. For example, if you see “6/9,” it would mean that the table is a 9-player table, but only 6 players are currently seated and there are 2 spare seats.
• Limit: This tells you the limit nature of the table you’re joining. It could be No Limit (designated as NL), Pot limit, or Limit (fixed).
• Average pot: This tells you the average winning pot values for that table
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• Players per flop: This will tell you the average number of players who see the flop. That is, guys who’re not folding before the flop. And who call the pre flop bet and see the cards on the flop. For example, if you see 40% Player/flop at a ten-man table, that would mean that an average of 4 players see each flop. This should tell you that at every given point in time on that table, there’s at least 4 big blinds in the pot.
• Hands/hour: If you don’t fancy playing poker at high speed, this is the stat you first want to check out. This stat is an indication of how fast or slow a table is. It indicates the number of hands dealt per hour. The higher the number, the faster the table.
• Wait: Usually displayed to tell you the number of players waiting to join a table. Once a player leaves, the next person in line from the waiting list joins the table.
Players per flop stat: making your final decision
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If you ask a seasoned poker player – who’s enjoyed huge success rates at poker tables – what the best table to play at is, I’m sure he would tell you it’s a table comprising of many fish and weak players. Why? Because, in order to win consistently in poker you need to be playing against guys who are not as good as you, guys who’re always chasing their losses regardless of how unlikely it is, and guys who play too many hands in the hopes of hitting cards on the flop, turn, or river.
The question now is, how will you know the tables where these types of players are most predominant? The answer is pretty simple; simply check the players per flop statistic for any table you want to join. What this stat tells you is the average number of players at the table seeing each flop. The higher this number is, the higher the number of fish players that are present at the table.
You may be wondering: How do we know this?
Well, we know this because we know the definition of what fish players are and what their most predominant traits are too. A typical fish player would chase losses, play bad cards, and follow it up with hands that should be folded. Now, when you see a table with high “player per flop” percentage, it simply means that there are many players on that table who’re trying to play each flop without any proper hand selection.
In conclusion, a good table to play at would be a table comprising of many fishes. Although you may not come across such tables too often, you can still aim for a decent table with at least 20% “player per flop” stat. And if you’re lucky to get 30% or more, then that’s even better.