Table Selection, Table Selection, Table Selection!

When a poker player considers sitting down at a poker table, whether at a “live” brick and mortar casino or at an online poker site, he can usually choose from several different tables at which to play. If he is offered a seat at one table he can accept that seat or he can pass it up and wait for a seat at another table. Most beginning players simply accept the first available seat at the first available table.

More knowledgeable players, however, will make this choice very carefully. Such players are generally well aware that choice of table can have an enormous impact on their hourly profit potential and they will often pass up one seat after another until finally offered a seat at a table which they deem to be sufficiently profitable. Indeed, of all the weapons in a serious player’s arsenal, the ability to quickly and accurately size up tables for profitability is among the most important.

To understand why this is so, it is necessary to realize that, for serious players, poker is not so much a game as it is a competitive sport. Essentially, a player wins at any sporting competition by being better than his competitors, and a poker player wins, in the long run, in the same way: by being consistently better than the other players at his tables.

However, poker differs from other sports in that a poker player can actually select his own competitors. He does this, of course, by choosing at which table he plays. For a serious player who is primarily interested in increasing his hourly win rate, it is therefore very important that he choose his table in such a way that he maximizes his profit potential.

A table which appears to present a good opportunity for profit is called a beatable table (or beatable game). Every long term winner at poker shares the following characteristic: he consistently restricts his play to beatable games.

Perhaps surprisingly, this holds true for just about any skill level. Even a mediocre player can become a long term winner simply by restricting his play to beatable games. If he has any skill at all he will be able to find such games, although he may have to move down in limit – perhaps even down to micro limits. However, most such players are primarily playing for fun, not profit. Consequently, they are usually unwilling to put much effort into seeking out beatable games and/or are not content to play at micro limits where they might be better able to find beatable games, and this is why players of average skill or less tend to be losers rather than winners.

An expert player also becomes a long term winner by seeking out beatable games. The advantage of being an expert player versus being a mediocre player is twofold: the expert will be able to find many more beatable games and the expert’s edge over his beatable opponents will tend to be much greater. However, even a greatly skilled player should not assume that every game in which he plays is beatable. He must still consider the effect of the house rake.

Almost all poker rooms, whether live or online, keep a small percentage from sufficiently large pots as a fee for providing the games. This is called the house rake. Over time, a player’s losses to the rake can add up considerably. Therefore, when a player is seeking out a beatable game, it is important that he bear in mind that, in order for a game to be beatable, the other players at the table must be bad enough overall that the player’s profits from his opponents’ bad play will sufficiently overcome his losses to the house rake. Even experts get into trouble by underestimating the effect of house rake on their long term profits.

It is not unusual for an expert player to find himself sitting at a table where he is just a little bit better than the other players overall. At such times he might fool himself into thinking he is sitting in a beatable game. However, a small difference in skill is unlikely to generate enough profit to significantly overcome losses to the rake. If the expert continues playing in such games he may find that his winnings don’t cover his daily living expenses and he risks going broke.

A related problem for expert players in terms of finding a beatable game is that the edge obtained from a difference in skill diminishes as skill levels rise overall. In other words, a great player, playing against a table full of merely good players, will likely have trouble gaining any significant advantage, even with no rake. The great player will be able to win or save an extra bet here and there allowing him to pull ahead of his opponents, but he won’t find the big profit opportunities that occur when, for example, a very bad player chases with second best hands that have little chance of improving.

Therefore, to get a bigger edge, even a great player may have to move down in limit and even then he should still be choosy about which games he sits in. Unfortunately, great players tend to also have great egos which sometimes won’t allow them to move down in limit. They also tend to believe they can beat any game regardless of other factors including house rake. For these reasons it is not uncommon for even great players to go broke or “bust out” playing poker.

As for finding a beatable game, this is really just an exercise in seeking out bad players. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of bad players: maniacs and calling stations. A maniac will bet, raise, and re-raise with weak hands – often with hands that have no value at all. Such players can be very profitable but they can also be very dangerous. A maniac on a good run of cards can cost the other players at his table a great deal of money.

A calling station is a player who calls raises with weaker hands and is thereafter overly reluctant to lay down his hand even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he is beaten. Sometimes a bad player combines these qualities.

Finding such players in brick and mortar casinos often involves visual clues. For example, a player who appears nervous or uncomfortable is likely to be unskilled. Or, a player who too often hesitates before betting or calling is also probably unskilled. But after finding one or more of these players at a table and eventually being seated with them, it is still necessary to continue watching their play carefully.

Quite often an expert player will attempt to fool his opponents into thinking he is weak. Of course, the expert can only disguise his actual play to a certain extent. Primarily, therefore, he builds a weak table image by being an actor at the table. He tries to look and speak the same way as would a weak player. An expert player with a good act can continue fooling unwary opponents indefinitely. Over time, however, the deceptive expert’s actual play will eventually demonstrate his true skills to an experienced and observant opponent.

Online, identifying bad players must be done differently. Most sites provide table statistics such as average pot size and average number of hands per hour. A bad player pumps money into pots by calling or raising when he should fold, thereby inflating the average size of the pots at his table. Consequently, a table with a high average pot size could indicate the presence of one or more bad players.

However, average pot size alone should not be the only criteria used to evaluate a table. Very good, aggressive players tend to raise and re-raise for proper strategic reasons, often building large pots in the process. In this case a high average pot size could actually be a danger signal. To differentiate between the two possibilities, consider also the average number of hands per hour. Very good players tend to play quickly whereas weaker players play more slowly, often hesitating before deciding what to do. Therefore, a table with both a high average pot size and a relatively low number of hands per hour is likely to contain bad players rather than good, aggressive players.

With bad players at the table, the skill of the other players becomes much less important in terms of table profitability. An average player, for instance, can usually safely play at a table containing a couple of bad players and several players who might be much better than himself. This is possible because, with bad players in the game, the play of good players is restricted. It becomes easier to read the good players’ hands and thereby stay out of their way. For instance, when a good player raises with a bad player yet to call behind him, he is unlikely to be bluffing, because he must expect that the bad player will call or perhaps even re-raise, and the average player will be able to safely throw his hand away and will save money doing so.

Table selection should therefore be of crucial importance to any serious player. Moreover, even recreational players will find their poker results greatly improved by taking just a little more care to seek out better games and to avoid the more obviously unbeatable games.