What if I told you that the most important decision you’ll make during a poker session happens before you’re dealt into a hand? In fact, that decision may come before you get into your car (if you play live poker) or choose what site to log into (if you’re an online player).
The most important decision you make will be game selection in poker and which table you sit at.
Your Most Important Decision is Where To Sit
It perplexes me that of the effectively infinite amount of poker training material that exists on the Internet, almost none of it talks about game selection. I guess game selection is not as interesting a topic as check/raise bluffing, or the latest Truth revealed by the solvers.
Of course, depending on the market you play in, your game choice may be as narrow as a hot dog stand menu (with, or without chili?) or as broad as a Cheesecake Factory menu. But in all but the tiniest of markets, you have at least some choice – if not venue, then at least which stakes and table you choose within a room. If you play online, depending on your tolerance for gray (or deep gray) markets, you have at least half a dozen online sites to choose from, and then all the stakes and tables within those.
I’ve been banging on this drum for years now. In fact, I called poor game selection in poker one of 3 big mistakes low stakes players make. That article was over a year ago, so I’m delighted to revisit this topic.
What to Look For In a Game
The traditional wisdom about game selection in poker, reaching back to O.G. Mike Caro in the 1980’s, is that you’re looking for a happy, gambly table, with jokes being traded, people laughing and having a good time. For extra credit, plenty of alcohol flowing.
This is definitely a true statement, but it’s more nuanced than that.
For instance, suppose you see a nine-handed $2/3 NLH game in which one player is straddling every hand (because the room has a Mississippi poker straddle policy). When the action gets to that player, they shove all-in without looking at their cards. If they lose, they rebuy for the table max of $300. Otherwise, they let their winnings pile up.
Is this a good game? Yes, definitely – the other eight players are certainly +EV in this situation. However, it’s not going to be easy to realize all that EV. Suppose there are three limps in front of that player, who then shoves $300 without looking. You find pocket 8’s in your hand. Is 88 ahead of the maniac’s random hand? Yes, 70%-30%, a fine gamble if ever there was one. But what if one of the limpers knew what was likely to happen, and quietly flat-called the $6 straddle with QQ?
Furthermore, while 70-30 is a great gamble, it’s nothing like a guarantee.
Everybody Wants Nonsense and Horseplay
My experience in playing live poker is that most people, even the “for-profit” players, tend to gravitate toward games such as the above, where there’s crazy action. They’re looking for pots with 200-300 big blinds in them. Blind raises, multiple straddles, and people playing their hand after looking at only one card. In short: tomfoolery, shenanigans, mischief, and monkey business.
Certainly such games can be very profitable, but that profit is often buried in a snake’s nest of variance. Consider the following tweet:
This top L.A. pro describes getting clobbered for his worst loss of the year, in a game where a player was blind shoving every hand.
Imagine a dream scenario: a nine-handed table where two whales are creating infinite action, tossing money around. Giant pots are being pushed all around the table, and he who flops a set can win 500 BBs in the right pot. The floorman offers you a seat at that table. Grab it, right?
Well, suppose that now I tell you that the other six players at the table are all drawn from the top ten players in that room’s player pool and you will have the worst poker table position against them. Do you still want to set your chips down?
Remember that every seat at the table represents a net inflow of chips into the game, or a net outflow of chips from the game. If there are two whales donating, but six winning regs, you must compete with the six winning players for the losses that the whales are racking up. Your “fair” share is less than one-third of one whale’s losses. Furthermore, those regs will be more than happy to take your chips too.
Every for-profit player at your table is removing chips from the game. Think of it as extra rake being taken.
Getting Water From a Mountain Spring Rather Than a Waterfall
Consider instead a table full of loose passive players who like to see flops. No parties being thrown, no triple straddles or blind shoves. Nope, these folks aren’t interested in raising a lot, and definitely aren’t interested in much 3-betting. However, they have no compunction about calling 3-bets cold. There’s a decent chance that if you sit down at that table, you’ll be the only for-profit player. Thus your only competition for the other eight players’ chips is the rake slot next to the dealer (stiff competition, I’ll grant).
You won’t see many 300 or 400 BB pots at this table. However, thanks to loose preflop play, and massively multi-way action, the pot will routinely be 12-20 BBs when the flop hits. Of course, most of those hands will whiff most flops. By being selective preflop (unlike your table-mates), you will arrive at the flop with what my friend Benton Blakeman calls, “More and better lottery tickets.”
Importantly, when you whiff a flop, you fold. Your opponents will often find excuses to continue with marginal hands. Or they’ll just open-jam a flush draw on the flop because they want to be sure they see two more cards. Sure, they get to realize their equity, but if their equity is 33% against your top pair hand, your top pair is printing EV on the run-out.
You simply wait until you almost certainly have the best hand, and then pile chips in. With that many people seeing the flop, you can usually count on a second best hand that is willing to pay you off.
“Your Game” Is The Best Game In The Room
Too many players put a label on themselves (“I am a $2/5 player”) and walk by the $1/3 tables without looking at them. This may be ignorance or ego at play – probably some of both. This completely misses the point that your bankroll doesn’t care what game the chips came from.
The best game in the room may not be the biggest game in the room for which you’re bankrolled.
In a recent session, I got up from the biggest game in our room – my usual stakes – and moved to a lower stakes table. The woman running the board looked at me askance, but I didn’t care. Why did I move? The larger game had only recently started, and everybody in it (including a couple of very strong players) was fresh and alert.
Two tables over, in the lower stakes game, they had been playing all night. Stacks were enormous, and they had instituted a “mandatory” straddle at some point, making the game relatively close in stakes to the larger game. The players were bleary-eyed, and everybody was seeing flops, raises be damned, with all manner of junk. They were hoping to hit the miracle that would dig them out of the hole they’d dug over the prior 7-8 hours.
There was zero doubt in my mind that my EV was higher in that “lower stakes” game, so that’s where I went. If other people want to worry about what label I have on my lapel, let them.
Summing Up The Search
Maybe you think that the action table is the most profitable one in the room. If so, great, get a seat there and play in that game. Just be aware that the table with the most “action” may not be the most profitable one.
Also, don’t have any preconceptions about what “your game” is. Your game is the table that rates to have the highest EV for you, all things considered. Don’t let labels, or ego, or peer pressure steer you wrong.
But whatever you do, reevaluate the game choices often.
Always be on the look-out for a better game than the one you’re in.
You should be standing up every two hours at most to walk around, stretch your legs, and clear your head. If you’re playing online poker, it should be more often than that, perhaps as little as half an hour.
During those breaks, look around your poker room, look around the online lobby. Is there a better game? If so, you’re costing yourself money every orbit you take at your current table.
Make your game selection decision early and often. Every session.
