what makes a soft site?

i know that a soft game is basically a high pre-flop % and not alot of raising (debatable, as some may prefer crazy fish over passive fish)

but wondering what makes a poker site have a large number of these good "soft" games. seems alot of fishy traffic may have gravitated to no-limit/shorthanded.

as i had mentioned in other threads, i recently changed from a sports book to party poker. the sports book was pretty soft but the availability of tables was terrible and it seemed like there was a major lack of bonuses. anyhow, i found party poker quite tight at 2/4 (i know others will say there's lots of VPIP > 30% but that's often after a raise, and i don't think it's a high number anyhow, i'd be looking more for 40%+)

this got me thinking what makes a poker site soft. here are some thoughts:

1) doesn't allow multi-tabling. in response, i think i may multi-site poker sites that don't allow multi-tables.

2) major sports book or casino where non-poker players have $$$$ and may wander over to poker (like a B&M somewhat)

3) pretty skinny bonuses (less "bonus whoring", and i know that's a good site.. problem is that almost all sites seem to have pretty major bonus programs.

any other major factors to keep in mind. i'm thinking party used to be fishy but the multi-tabling sharks have moved in.

what do you guys consider soft sites? i always hear pacific poker. don't know what else. maybe willhill, a major sports betting site (although it is good on bonuses)

[BradleyT]

Good search engine rankings for "play online poker" type terms. If someones using google to find a site to play at you know they probably suck.

[MadMat]

Lack of pokertracker support is one I think helps, a lot of the multi-tabling tags don't like to play without it!

bradleyT and madmatt,

good points! and thank you....

i don't have pokertracker yet, and i could just feel some of the others using it on party poker. could they have got good stats on me in 2 hours??

if i'm going to play pokertracker sites, i'll have to get it, but i'd rather play non-pokertracker sites

i see bodog work with PT, and pacific seems complicated for PT (and lack of multi-tabling may chase the sharks away).

[OrianasDaad]

Fairly reliable stats as far as VPIP, PFR, and AGG can be obtained in less than 2 hours. These resolve rather quickly. If you don't know the terms, look them up. They are in a sticky FAQ on one of these sub-forums.

Most of the other stats, especially for tight players, resolve much more slowly than loose players - because tight players make less in the way of decisions than loose players do. If you are tight, it will be almost instantly recognizable to PT users. Ditto for aggression.

I wouldn't worry about it too much though. I would wager that a signifigant majority of multi-tabling PT users don't do the "extra work" away from the table to profile their opponents - especially the ones that play 4+ tables on any combination of sites.

For instance, on Party, there's a guy I've played lots against. He likes to bluff raise tight players on the turn. PT stats won't tell you this, but you can use PT to study to find out what players' tendancies are.

As far as what makes a site soft: Any site where you can get on tables where most of the other players are signifigantly worse than you are makes it soft. I've found some "tight" games that I thought were soft because I had good book on most of the players in the game. Conversely, I don't do so well in some of the very loose and wild games, but I'm learning how to beat tables with 4+ maniacs at them.

a) loose passive players
b) weak tight players
c) maniac players

One thing to keep in mind...if a table on a site has 1 maniac and a bunch of bad, weak tight...the "average table VPIP" is going to seem poor, but that doesn't make the game bad. It's not the table average that determines if a game is good or bad, it's the number of players YOU have a significant edge over that determines how fishy/soft a game is. Really weak tight players are nearly as easy to profit on as maniacs, with less variance to boot.

-dustyn