Online Poker Table Selection

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Online Poker Table Selection

Though it is not part of actual play, table selection is an integral part of poker strategy, kind of like rakeback (check out rakemeback.com for the best deals), which has nothing to do with play either, yet it offers such a sweet edge to all those who sign up for a deal.

As the saying goes, regardless of your skill level, at the poker table you’ll only ever be as successful as your opponents allow you to be. A weaker player may enjoy a nice profitable session at one table, while at another one, a much better player may struggle only breaking even thanks to the rakeback deal he signed up for. Since the goal in poker is to make money and not to prove your green felt prowess, your aim should always be to play against as weak a player base as possible. I’ve read countless articles out there about the importance of table- and yes, even game selection. I found tips about how one should go about his/her live table selection, but there seems to be awful little information available about online poker table selection. Yeah, I know there are fewer tells available in online poker but still, one should not neglect online table selection on account of that fact: it’s much too important a factor to just end up shoved under the rug.

While a few years ago, simply allowing the software to select a table for you and to seat you at it may have worked fine, nowadays you can’t expect that approach to land you a profitable table. The games have tightened up, and due to the abundance of useful information available about poker strategy everywhere, players have wisened up to shenanigans that worked wonders in the past. This is a new online poker world out there, and it requires a different type of approach table selection-wise.

The obvious point to start your online poker table selection is in the main lobby. There are all sorts of statistics displayed there, and there’s nothing in the world that says you should ignore all that free information. Look for tables with a high flops seen percentage. Some poker rooms feature options which allow you to sort the tables according to this criteria: use it. High flops viewed percentages usually mean that there are many multi-way pots played at that table. That in turn means there are many limpers at that table, which means that you’ve found the fish you’ve been searching for.

Be careful though, sometimes the flops viewed percentage may be misleading. Tables that went on short-handed for a while and have recently filled up will have artificially high flops viewed percentages. To weed out such false tables, take a look at the number of hands played per hour. Short handed tables obviously generate more hands per hour than full ones, so if the high flops seen percentage is coupled with an unnaturally large number of hands/hour, you’ve stumbled upon a recently filled up short handed able.

Use the color-coding option that so many online poker rooms offer these days to mark your fish. Don’t be shy to take notes on them too. Use a different color on sharks you’re better off avoiding, on short stackers and on reasonable players you’re not afraid to lock horns with. One extremely efficient way to spot a fish is to keep an eye on his stack. A good player knows the importance of having as big a stack as possible at the table, so whenever he loses a larger pot, he tops his stack right back up. A fish will never do that, regardless of whether or not he has money left in his account.

Article Provided by my friends at Rake Me Back

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