Table Selection online?

[DWarrior]

There's so much emphasis on table selection, but I never understood its effectiveness.

For example: you spend 30 minutes running poker tracker on tables before joining them. After 6 tables and an hour wasted, you find a juicy table with a lot of fish. Your EV and hourly rate increase, but by how much? In the world of online poker, players come and go, and it's unusual for a table to not have players come and go at least once every 5 minutes. The trully bad players usually sit down with the bare minimum, and leave after after they lose an all-in. Table averages change signifficantly, it takes just one all-in to send the average pot size through the roof, and if the cards run cold for a little bit, it'll seem like that table is full of rocks.

In practice, most tables have around the same skill level, as I noticed. The juiciest tables quickly neutralize, and the ridiculous pot sizes are brought down to earth the next time that average is recomputed.

I can understand in a live game, where you'll be butting heads with the same players for several hours, then if you spot a table full of live players, and a table with a couple of rocks and a pro, it's foolish to go over to the tough table.

Consider also the extreme examples of people tracking tables for 30 minutes before sitting down, just to maximize their edge against the few people that actually stick around for taht long. That's 30 minutes of lost profit, and I doubt the small edge you gain will make up for all the profit you lose (also, the table won't stay that way for more than 1 hour)


I think it's much more important to realize the limit you can beat, and stick to it until you learn the game to move up in limits. I don't think table selection on the large sites will do you much good, though I think it's a good idea to jump into tables that look the juiciest. Just don't go out of your way trying to track everyone before making a decision to play the table.