Keys to Game Selection

[PShabi]

The only players that will appear in that box are those who are online at the time.

You see a small set because:

a) you don't have many in your list
b) not many are online at the time
c) you're not using the arrows to scroll

I probably only have 100 or so online at a given time, and my list is probably getting close to 1500.

Out of those 100, a substantially smaller amount are actually playing at my limit.

[melioris]

Thanks. My small subset is usually 50-75 from the buddy list of lots and lots. Essentially everyone at 1/2 falls under the parameters you recommend.

[Talking Poker]

I assume you're only getting the ones who are online at that very moment, which is going to be a small fraction of your entire list.

[johnp158]

My favorite so far: The 55/3 guy who you sat to the left of and drilled; next time you open party, he's at the 15/30 table instead of 3/6.

[MathBabe]

This is good stuff. I was home sick today, so I found and installed the hand grabber and iWitness. I also installed PartyPoker, since I had never played it on this machine - I gave up when I lost my initial deposit there, and was playing at lower limits than they offer.

Well, hello, $20 returning bonus! I had a little trouble with iWitness, but I spent the morning collecting data on Limit .50/$1 and the afternoon seeing if I could use it.

On the first table I joined, my fish disappeared as soon as the blinds got to me. It wasn't a waste of time, though, because I got dealt TT, A5s, and AKo in that orbit before I left, almost doubling my money on that round.

Then I found a guy who was VPIP 51% and PFR less than 2. I eventually managed to get to his left by joining the waitlist several times, and sat with him for half an hour until he decided to take his remaining $2 and leave.

It's beautiful playing against these calling stations! My $20 bonus is now $46.75 in my account, where I had $0 this morning. Thanks, Pshabi!

[Talking Poker]

I wonder if it would be a good idea to change your parameters to get a smaller sample. I was thinking of doing the same myself, so I could focus on the super-donks instead of just the donks. ie:

VP$IP >= 50
PRF <= 7

FP$IP >= 60
PFR >= 7

Something like that.

Cause those are SERIOUSLY bad players.

[Talking Poker]

In my limited experience so far, I've found that it's a real pain i nthe ass trying to get the perfect seats.... but seems to be worthwhile. Being in the seat directly to the left of the donk is a huge advantage. Being 2 to the left is ok (provided the person in between isn't an above average player), but if you are even 3 to the left or even get someone in between you and the donk that knows what they are doing, it almost makes it not worthwhile.

I guess I'm still trying to find the balance of sitting at a table with bad players and winning vs. trying to sit in the perfect seat against a horrible player.

Any thoughts on this, pshabi? Now that we have all this data, maybe you can walk us through the details of how you choose your seats.... I understand this:

But how long does it typically take you to get 4 tables going where you are happy with your seats.... and once you do, do you still keep an eye on your other fish to see if better seats open up? Or are you just happy with what you've got and focus on your play?

[MathBabe]

I'm interested in this as well.

First, I only take the seats right next to the donkeys. I find it annoying, because I find I have to get myself on the wait list for 7-10 tables at once. But I can get them eventually.

Secondly, isn't the conventional wisdom that you want the donkeys on your left, and the more aggressive players on your right?

[Boobie Lover]

The reason you want the donkies on your immediate right is that you want to isolate against them. Of course, if you play micro-limits, isolating doesn't really work, and table selection doesn't really matter since all tables play like a donkfest.

[Talking Poker]

Assuming you mean "good" and not "aggressive" (since donks are often ultra-aggressive), absolutely not! If you really did mean "aggressive" and meant to say "passive" (calling station) instead of "donkey," then I would agree with your statement.

Position Position Position! It's a huge advantage to act after the person you are targetting. Think about it.... you want the guy playing every hand to act before you, so you can act after him and isolate him (by raising and making it extremely difficult for anyone else to come along for the ride).

[PShabi]

When fishfinding, I usually will sit to the immediate left or one to the left of the fishy player. However, I'm not that picky.

For instance, I'm on a waitlist and a table pops up with a seat open. It's directly across from my targeted fish, so the position isn't that great. However, if I look and see that the person to the right of the open seat is sitting with $90, I'll sit down anyway.

Players sitting short is a true sign of retardedness. Even if I don't have stats, I'm pretty confident that it's probably a good seat. If I find out that's not true, I'll move after one orbit sometimes. I change seats a lot.

It's kind of distracting and is definitely a much bigger pain in the ass than just opening 4-tables and sitting down. It's worth it to me though.

With a list as big as mine, it's hard not to find 10 buddies online at once. You'd be surprised at just how many times the seat that opens up is the seat you actually want. There's times where I'll join 10 waitlists and the first 3 tables that open up have juicy seats.

I'm very meticulous when it comes to poker. Any edge I can get is an edge worth exploiting. The sea of fish is just so vast at Party, that after you've collected enough data, it's not that hard to find them.

While you are still accumulating names on your list, my suggestion is this:

When you know you want to play, start datamining first. Open up your software, start mining, go get a drink, have a smoke, fix a snack, etc.

Come back 30-40 minutes later and while you don't have totally significant data, you have a good idea where the fish are. If a player has been dealt 30 hands, played 18 of them, and never raised prefloop, well, you don't need 10,000 hands on him to know he's a weiner.

So, start mining before you play, join all 10 lists when you come back and see what pops up.

[MathBabe]

That's what I get for not being precise. What do you mean by donkey, anyway? Loose/aggressive? I see people using it to mean anybody who does anything stupid.

I'm not saying that Lee Jones is the expert in everything - that's why I'm here, to learn how to move beyond it. But just so you know where I'm coming from, in Winning Low-Limit Hold'Em he says:

"If there is a player who is very aggressive and raises a lot, you'd generally like to be on his left. That way, you'll see those raises coming before you act and can drop your marginal hands. If you sit to his right, too often you call one bet only to have him raise behind you and now you wish you'd saved the first bet."

and also:

"In general, you'd like to have loose passive players to your left. They behave predictably so you're more willing to have them act after you. You will have an easier time predictig what they'll do, ad will make the right play more often."

I understand wanting to target the person specifically, but I'm having trouble because at .50/$1, I can't isolate a player. It's literally 5% of the time that it's just me and that person in a hand. If I raise, I'll have three callers. Now, a lot of times they are fish too, but if there are four of them, I have to consider that I don't have the best hand.

I can pick some examples from the past few days and post them in the "How did I Play This" thread, if you'd like.

[melioris]

6-handed or full table?

[PShabi]

6-max limit, I almost never call a bet preflop. It's either raise or fold. Furthermore, I would never put in a bet if I wouldn't at least call one raise. WTF?

[MathBabe]

Full table of ten.

[Talking Poker]

The quotes you posted above are Lee agreeing with what I was saying. Aggressive on the right Passive on the left.

You are incorrectly using the terms donkey (which means "bad" if you want a simple definition) and aggressive interchangeably... and that is absolutely not the case. Take these two guys:
1. 90% VP$IP, 2% PRF (Loose Passive).
2. 75% VP$IP, 55% PFR (Loose Aggressive).

Both players are donkeys, FOR SURE... but they are different kinds of donkeys.

We all agree that it would be best to have Player #2 on our right. Lee is suggesting that we want player #1 on our left, and because of this EXTREME case (he sees almost every flop), I agree with him. He's going to call 2 bets every time you raise. But it wouldn't be a problem if he was on your right either (you can still raise and he's still going to call the next time around). The important thing here is that we don't want Player #2 on our left. The table will probably still be profitable for us that way, but our life will be much easier if he's on our right.

If in the limits you play, you are seeing tables full of players like this, I honestly don't think it's even worth targeting specific fish. Just play straight up poker (keep an eye on who might actually be good though), and crush the entire table (in the long run, of course).

Lastly: I've adjusted pshabi's FishFinder Suggestions (VP$IP/PFR filters) to make them even more fishy - I had too many buddies online to choose from, so I decided to go after the fishiest of the fish - even though I have been playing the same limit and game as him. If people are using this system for full ring games (9 or 10 players), they most definitely need to adjust the filters. And they should probably be adjusted at different limits as well.

Basically, the more players at the table and the higher the limit you are playing, the less loose someone needs to be in order to be a fish among his peers (you can lower the VP$IP number in your filter).

IMO, it's not the criteria that matters so much as it is what % of your opponents you are identifying as bigger than average fish. If 50% of the players you are playing with are being labeled as fish, it might be time to tighten up your FishFinding criteria. If, however, only 2% are being labelled as fish, you may want to lower your requirements a bit.

[MathBabe]

This doesn't, however, agree with what Pshabi was saying - he said he likes to keep both the "loose donkeys" and the "passive donkeys" on his immediate right. I know that wasn't the focus of the post - but now that I've got the software up and running and tried out the methods, I'm ready for some fine-tuning.

Actually, I was looking for a more precise definition of 'donkey'. :-) I saw sea ask this a while back, but I'm not sure anyone answered.
Maniac = loose aggressive
Fish = loose passive
Calling station = passive, but not necessarily loose?
Donkey = ??

Mining the data in Party for 25 or so hands before I play has been very instructive. I can find tables that range in average VPIP from 20% to almost 40%, at .50/1.00. There are usually 1, 2, or occasionally 3 people with a VPIP over 40, and 7-9 with more typical VPIP 20/PFR 3 to 8.

I definitely have to move the filtering VPIP up, because of playing full tables. And I'm wondering about the aggression. Frankly, embarrassing as it is, I don't do that well against the more aggressive players. I tend to think I should improve my game, but perhaps with that may fish in the Party sea, I can filter for the ones I naturally do well against?

[Talking Poker]

Again, donkey = bad player. I don't believe there are specific playing stlyes associated with a donkey.... Well, *not* tight-aggressive. But even a good player is capable of making a bad play and "donking" off a bunch of chips. You know, like calling all in with T high, hoping to hit a gutshot. Get it?

Playing at a full table, you'd want to move the VP$IP filtering DOWN, not UP. You are supposed to play tighter at full tables. I think I'm around 27% VP$IP at 6 max limit and 18% VP$IP at a full limit table. So... a "donkey" (in this case meaning very loose preflop player) might be 50% at 6 max and just 35 or 40% at full ring.

Lastly, YES! The most important thing is learning how to play solid, winning poker. Only AFTER you've learned how to beat the various styles of opponents does it make sense for you to target specific players. In the past, you've been very passive, which is a recipe for disaster if you are targeting maniacs.