Table and Game Selection
Game and table selection (in that order) are two of the most
important “off-the-table” poker skills a player can possess. Playing
with
rakeback is also a good advantage; however that doesn’t really
require a lot of skill to pull off.
When it comes to game selection, the first thing you have to get
right is the poker variant you want to be in. It is a fairly
well-known fact that – being the most popular variant – Texas Holdem
has by far the most fish at the tables. Of course, you want to play
where the most fish are, but there are other things you need to
consider, too. Texas Holdem is not the most popular game with
beginners for nothing: it gives rookies a fighting chance against
those who really know how to play the game. It’s something close to
a 40/60 situation, and even though 60 is much better than 40, the
guy with 40 shall win too, every now and then. Luck is just too much
of a factor in Texas Holdem, and short –term variance favors
rookies. In the long-run though, it is a very difficult game to
beat, and obviously, rookies can’t really beat a good player if you
look at it like that.
Omaha
and Stud are different.
These are games of huge edges, and starting hand evaluation takes on
a whole new meaning here. Even though the betting element of the
game prevails, luck-induced fluctuations are going to be very small.
This means that rookies do not stand a chance against good players
in these games. Let’s suppose you’re both a very good Texas Holdem
and Omaha
player. Which game do you reckon you can make the most money off of?
That depends. If you’re playing in a real live casino, where
there are one or two tables available for
Omaha, and you
know the players who play there are good at it, you don’t want to be
in that game. Omaha
– when played against skilled opposition – is a living nightmare.
Avoid that at all cost. On the other hand, however, if you’re
playing in an online poker room, where there are plenty of tables
available and where tables are full of rookies who barely know the
rules of the game, you should definitely choose
Omaha over
Holdem.
In order to be able to exercise proper game selection, a poker
player has to be extremely flexible: you have to be able to play at
any limit and at any type (FL, PL or NL) well. Only this way will
you be able to select the best table out of what the
brick-and-mortar casino has on offer. In online poker, this
flexibility is not as important however, it still doesn’t hurt to be
handy with just about any limit and game-type.
Once you know which limit, type and variant you want to play at,
next thing you have to choose is the table at the exact game of your
choice. In online poker rooms there are several tables at each of
these limits (depending on how popular the game is) and the
client-software offers you an excellent means of table selection:
just double click the table and watch the action at it, without
actually taking a seat. You can do this for hours on end if you wish
so, and nobody at the table will ever know you’re watching them. As
soon as you figure you like what you see, and you have most players
around the table read, you can sit down. Heck, if you’re really
patient, you can even choose to have position this or that or the
other player. In this respect, online poker presents players with a
few definite advantages real live poker could never hope to match.
Still it’s amazing how many players just ignore this possibility and
they let the software make an automatic selection for them. I
suppose that too comes with the nature of the game.
Table and game
selection truly kicks in when there are very few or a whole bunch of
tables available. If you have two tables you can choose from, it’d
be crazy not to pick the better of the two, if you had 100, again,
it’d be just stupid not to pick and excellent one.
