Sloe Times

So lately I've given a lot of thought to my current streak of winnings and have determined that it's not just good play that's doing it. Granted, good solid play is the major component to winning, but when it comes to online poker, table selection is also important. Right now I'm looking at the $.50/$1 and $1/$2 level where the most choices for table selection appear to be for the level I'm comfortable playing at. However, the ideas expressed here should apply to any level and game type (Limit or No Limit) where you have a choice of tables to sit at. Additionally, this information should also help regardless of which site you play on. There are some important differences, but I'll cover those as well.

For my examples, I'm going to use Paradise and Party since they share the two most common types of table listings. On Paradise you generally have the table name, the number of seats taken and available, the average pot size, and the percentage of players who see the flop. On Party, you have almost all of the same information except for the percentage of players seeing the flop. Knowing the percentage of players seeing the flop is an easy way to determine how loose or tight a game is. Without that information, I tend to then look at the average pot size. With limit poker you can make some rough calculations to determine how many people have to be playing or how the people on the table have to be playing to be able to generate that pot size so you get more of a SWAG on how loose a game is. My personal play style lately has been tight aggressive so I tend to look for the looser games. If on the other hand your play-style is loose aggressive, you may want to find a tighter game that you can push around. Then again, I guess if you're a rock you can go join the rock garden but I doubt it will be any fun or very profitable.

Once you've identified a likely table for your play, you now want to scout out the players. On sites like Paradise that show the flop percentage one of the things to be aware of is that everyone else sees that same information and it tends to attract the multi-table players (read as tight-aggressive players) for obvious reasons. If you get enough tight-aggressive players on a loose table it will very quickly turn into a rock garden. I think that this is one of the reasons that Party seems to be a fishier playground, it's more work to determine the loose tables than on sites like Paradise. Anyway, this takes us to the first step of figuring out what kind of players you're up against. It's usually pretty easy to identify which players are playing on multiple tables. Just look at the other tables and take note of which players on your table are also on the other ones. You can generally classify these people as tight-aggressive so you want to be more aware of the hands they actually play. The reason for this is that their attention span is generally limited to keeping a lookout for the premium hands. This then leaves everyone else at your table. When I sit down I generally elect to wait for the BB to come to me before I play, this does two things. It allows me to observe the other players. Are they passive or aggressive? Do they play solid hands or do they play any suited cards or even rags? I use the time before the BB comes my way and the first orbit to take the temperature at the table. If you haven't identified who your fish are by the time the BB gets to you for the second orbit, I believe the saying goes, "You are the fish."

Assuming that the temperature of the table is good, not too many multi-tabler or rocks and a fair share of fish, it's time to play. If I sense that the table for some reason is too tight I generally play long enough to recover my blinds and leave. If by the end of the first orbit I've got my buy-in plus some change then I'll get up. You're selection standards may be different than mine, but as long as you have standards by which you can evaluate a table, you should be able to find your "good games" and have some fun.