Table selection - In The lobby

Poker Web Watch / Matthew Pitt / 06 August 2009 / Leave a Comment

As a rule you do not want to be playing at the table with the tiny average pot size as you will find it too difficult to be paid off with any hands you have as it appears that the players there are passive and not willing to put money into the pot.

Ask anyone who plays online poker on a regular basis and each and every single one of them will agree that, over the past six to twelve months, the games have become more difficult and harder to win in.

There are numerous reasons for this including, but not limited to, players becoming more knowledgeable due to training sites and forums, more television coverage of poker and less recreational players due to the credit crunch and UIGEA.

That is not too say the games are not profitable, far from it, but what it does mean is as a player you need to press every little edge you can find and you can start to do this before you even take your seat at the tables.

In today's climate table selection runs bankroll management a close second in importance. Whilst most sites have dozens of tables running at each level, you should not simply jump straight into the first one that has an empty seat, you should take your time to choose your seat carefully.

The first tool you can use is the lobby. Here you can see how many hands are being played per hour, what the average pot size has been over the last few hands and how many players are seeing a flop, again over the past few hands. So how do you use this information to your advantage?

First up is hands per hour. Have a look up and down the lobby to see if there is an average number of hands being played. You will probably find the number to be around 75 hands per hour for short-handed No-limit Hold'em but if there are players sitting out this number may rise dramatically and if you have players with a poor connection or are stalling on all their actions, then this figure will drop. Less hands per hour means less potential profit per hour, so try to choose a table playing a "normal" amount.

Next up is the average, which is a good guide to how juicy the table has been over the last few hands. As I type this I am looking at the $0.25/$0.50 stakes on Betfair Poker and it seems that most of the tables fit into the $5-$8 range, but there is one table with an average pot size of over $20 and one as low as $1.90.

As a rule you do not want to be playing at the table with the tiny average pot size as you will find it too difficult to be paid off with any hands you have as it appears that the players there are passive and not willing to put money into the pot. Conversely, the table with the huge average pot size appears to be a little on the crazy side, so by sitting here you should be prepared to play for big pots and big pots only. Try to choose a table that has a slightly above average pot size.

Last but not least is the number of players seeing a flop, usually displayed as a percentage. Most tight-aggressive players of short-handed poker play between 20 and 25 percent of their hands as a general rule so use this as a rough guide. Anything under this figure and the table is likely to be overly tight and anything in the mid to high thirty's, and sometimes even higher, indicates the table as a whole is loose and therefore will probably have higher variance involved. I play approximately 25% of my hands so I try to sit at tables with around 35% of players seeing a flop but not more than 50% otherwise the entire game dynamics changing.

Coming up next will be table selection once you have chosen your potential seats in the lobby.

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