Picking the Right Table

[Reel Deal]

I always look for a bunch of short stacks and then buy-in for the max.

[lightfungus]

I have been meaning to start this thread, but I have been busy as of late. I would love to hear from the more successful players around, but what I have been doing, and I mean all the time, is sort the tables by avg pot. I find the one with the highest average pot. Usually, I find one or two itiots that a trying to give away their money. The longer I play with them the better chance I have at taking their money. Their aggressive play usually is contagious and the rest of the table gets in on the call fest and the preflop pots get large and the better hands take them down.

This is only NL though. I am not sure if this works for limit poker, but I find success with this strategy.

I read Barry Greenstein's poker book and he had an entire chapter on game selection. This is very important to him, and I agree that this has the potential to determine whether you make money or not that session. He also says never get up when you are winning and feel like you have a significant advantage (like 3%, where these percentages are based on a couple of things, youd have to read his book). Another possibly useful tidbit is when moving up in limits try to sit in with the min buyin to get your feet wet. If is doesnt go so well, drop back down and think about it. But only move up when you have conquered the current level, not just when you have the roll for it.

I hope to do some hand histories in the future from his book.

[MathBabe]

I've been thinking about this lately too, although not about NL. I play limit, and I prefer to play with as close to 10 people as possible, so I look at tables with 9 seated and choose the one with highest pot size and players/flop. I figure the more players per flop, the looser they are, and the less likely to be good players. PokerStars makes this easy, and I seem to recall doing the same on PartyPoker.

I use Gametime and I notice recently that I do better when the average VPIP for the table is between 20 and 30, not the 50 and over that you routinely find on the micro limit tables.

I also notice that I do better when GameTime is showing that I'm playing with mice, calling stations, and fish; and not doing well against dice or tasmanian devils. (I don't expect to do well against eagles or moneybags!)

I'm not sure whether I should seek these tables out, or not. I suspect the reason is that I'm still not playing aggressively enough (PokerTracker stats suggest that), and that if I learn to play well against the loose/aggressive players, I'll win more money longterm.