Article: table selecting and finding the fish

[angel19girlsingle]

I will start this article by saying that the biggest leak at least a micro grinding regular can have is to not table select well enough. Even if you are marginally better than any other regular at the table, rake will take away your edge and then some.

That being said, table selecting well enough means everything to your winrate, since there are plenty of huge fish at the micros and it's a huge leak not to take advantage of them.

What are we looking for when table selecting? There are a few things that make a table stand out from the rest:

1) We have at least one loose/passive 45/2 type of a player at the table with at least about 50bb stack, preferably at our right (if his on our left, it's still better to play than to leave)

2) There are no aggressive 3 betting regulars on our left

These two are important, because we want to be playing heads up with the fish as many hands as possible, position is not that important as they will not generally bluff us. We want to isolate the fish and if there are no aggressive regs on our left, we can achieve that goal easily.

These loose/passive fish often like hands like Ax, Kx, Jx, connectors and pocket pairs. Some of them call with almost any 2. They like to call a lot and will raise rarely. That's what make them so valuable to us when we know how to exploit them. We want to get heads up with them with a hand that makes a good top pair. So if we have a good table with a good fish, we are raising hands like A9 and QT from UTG regardless of where the fish is and they are often calling us when they are dominated.

When we hit the flop (top pair or better), we will go for 3 streets of value and we bet big. If we have a huge hand and the board is draw heavy, we might consider over betting since we don't want to see the worst card hitting when we have a set - and they really do like to call with draws.

When we don't hit the flop, it's usually a good idea to give up if we are out of position and the board is not that dry. If we are out of position, we bet dry flops and usually give up on the turn if we get called. We might even win the hand with A high if he happens to have a guthot or some random overs that he calls the flop with. If we are in position, we might cbet a bit more frequently, but generally a flop with a flush draw and various straight draw possibilities are not that good to cbet.

One thing to note is that to a fish A7 on a 722 board is as strong as AK on a A22 board. So when you are deep or many overcards can come on the next street and you have feeling that the fish has a top pair type of a hand that he will bet, check to him and make a big checkraise when you have a big hand. When fish bets, he usually doesn't fold to a raise. If you play a raised (preflop) pot and you check to him on the turn and he bets, just ship it if you have a big hand and you are around 100bb deep. They are bad at folding.

When we get raised by this type of player on a KJ75 type of a board, our AA is usually useless, so you will also need to make big laydowns. Of course, we don't want to fold AA to a minraise especially when we have position, as we are good a decent amount of the time when the river pairs the board. But even with a flush draw possibility, a raise from a fish on that type of a board usually means some type of 2 pair without better reads.

There are a few other player types that we would like to have at our table. Let's look at those.

1) A nit playing around 15/12
2) A huge monkey playing 50/30 or something like that

We can steal money from the nit, as his range for calling our preflop raises if very defined and it's easy to get away from the hand if he raises as he is almost never bluffing. He also doesn't come to our way when we isolate the fish. When a nit raises, we need a nut type of a hand to continue.

The monkey type is very interesting as pretty much anything is possible from them. We generally want to play pretty nitty against them and hope for a monster, because they are always expecting that we have nothing either when the board comes very dry or when they minbet and we just call. But each monkey has their own ideas and you need to figure them out. When you do, you have hit the goldmine.

You can 3 bet monkeys with a hand like QJ for value and to isolate as they will call with dominated hands. When you flop air, don't try to bluff too much, as they are calling you pretty light. If you flop a top pair type of a hand, let him try to bluff you. You can often check the flop behind and call any turn and river. If you have a hand that is good for calling off his bluffs, but doesn't stand a raise, play accordingly if you have reads that the villain might ship it sometimes with air. Don't make light calls when they raise, make them raise you light when you have a big hand.

So, table selecting is HUGE especially at the micros where fish swims and rake is high. Don't get into dick swinging contests with other regs, as the only party that will benefit is the site.

[Mr Papagiorgio]

I’m glad you started this thread, as I was feeling the need to ask a pro to spend a lot of time on this in a video.

This info is great when you are sitting at the table and I get this but what I’d like more info on is what information exactly does poker stars tell us in the lobby and how can we use it when getting our name on a bunch of waiting lists?????

They give us Number of Players Waiting, Average Pot, Avg Stack, Players per Flop and Hands per Hour.

I get the common sense part. If too many players are waiting, the game will be different by the time you get a seat. Bigger pots are better than smaller or you have short-stackers shoving or all nits if small. More hands should = more money to make or if very slow you might have less regs. And I guess big average stacks show that the game has been going for quite a while, or they took all the fish money and sent them home, or somebody could be stuck/on tilt.

OK then my question is: What combinations are winning LEGGO regs looking for or have their Table Ninja settings put on when they first log on to play.???

[angel19girlsingle]

I guess it's pretty standard to look for tables with high players per flop that don't have many shortstackers. Those will have the biggest queues also, so it might be better to wait for a while and see if there is another table coming at the top and join it quickly.

Alternative method is to try and find a table that doesn't maybe have the highest p/f, but has fairly large average stack. Especially if there's a player with less than 100bb stack or with a huge stack, it should be a good table. Usually a huge stack at the table means that either the player himself is a fish or that there is someone who donates since it's highly unlikely that one player has gotten such a big stack through setups or coinflips.

If there's a table with 40% p/f and a table with 30% p/f, the latter table might be better. That's because even though it's pretty certain that the first table will have a fish who is calling a lot, the second table might have a similar fish. The reason why the p/f is smaller on the latter might be because the rest of the table is full of nits and the first one would have more aggressive regs. So the latter table is better for us.