Choosing Your Seat at the Online Poker Table
With literally hundreds or even thousands of different styles of poker game going on via the internet and online poker these days, you can literally pretty much have your pick of the litter when it comes to choosing not only what type of game you’re looking for (from hold em to stud to Omaha 8 or better, cash games or tournaments, so on). But just as importantly, and perhaps even more so, when it comes to building your bank roll, is choosing the right texture of table, with certain kinds of players at it, will be most profitable for you to sit down at with your money.
Some people would argue that the most profitable scene in poker is when you find the really aggressive tables, where you can hunker down and wait for a big hand and pretty much always get paid off. While it is important to be getting paid, it is often too much of a risk if the players are your table are literally coming on with every kind of hand. Yeah, you can make some quick money doubling up when you make a big hand against an inferior one, but often either the cards might not come your way or you’ll end up getting sucked out in a big one, which makes the process too much a gamble.
Ultimately, for long run, solid poker, the best kind of table you can want to sit at a table with moderately conservative players who are willing to put their money in without the nuts. A good mix of gamble and ability to lay down here and there (so that you can snatch pots away from them with well-timed bets) is usually what you’ll want to find among the gamut of online seating arrangements.
While its not quite possible to tell exactly how a table is going to be, you can, to some extent, use the information provided in the table’s lobby to, to a fair amount, predict what the table is going to be like. Provided info like average pot size, hands played per hour, percentage of players who see the flop, and other info can be clear determining factors of exactly what you’re in for.
Because you want players to be giving action but not just going wild, a range between 28 and 33% of players seeing the flop is often exactly where you want to be, as opposed to tables where it gets in the mid to low teens, or up above 35%, which is a good indicator that the table is too tight or too loose. An average pot size of somewhere around 12x or 16x the big blind is also, on average, seeming to be right in the middle of the action, so that if you’re playing $1/$2 no limit, an average pot size of $24 to $32 is a good indicator that people are putting their money on the line, but not going bonkers.
