What Is Poker Table Selecting?

Table selecting is simply the act of choosing which table you are going to be seated at. In online poker it has become a bit of an art process because players understand the importance of having a weak player at their table. The fact of the matter is that poker is a zero sum game (with a large rake being withdrawn) and that makes it very difficult to win at. Unless their is significant value in the game or their is an incredible rewards program it is difficult to be profitable. Following the recent PokerStars VIP Changes it is even more difficult to win without a weak player around. Poker networks all over the world have been cutting back significantly on player rewards, which has had the effect of intensifying poker table selecting. Here are a few of the primary methods that players use to table select.

1) Poker Lobby Scan: By looking through the lobby for tables with high percentage to the flop or high pot averages you are more likely to find action tables.

2) Start New Tables: This is one of the oldest and most effective ways to find action. Often if you start a new game a weak player will come an join.

3) Look For A Player: At high stakes games in particular this is a very popular technique. Once a weak player is identified players will attempt to follow them around and play wherever they are playing.

4) Computer Software In Poker: In today’s games computer software has become increasingly popular for table selecting. You can expect a post on me in the near future where I discuss this in further detail. This is the cutting edge of table selection in online poker today and is highly controversial.

Poker Table Selection and The Poker Ecosystem?

A lot has been made about the effect that poker table selecting has on the poker ecosystem. I do not feel that poker table selecting has had a significant effect on the volume of poker being played. Obviously, if a bunch of regulars would just sit and play each other (all basically losing) while the house made money on the rake, volumes would be higher. However, this is simply not a realistic expectation. Most regulars are trying to beat the game (some are effective and some are not). I would argue that the intensity of poker table selecting in today’s poker environment is more a product of the poor position of today’s poker economy than it is the cause. Lots of player (in particular on two plus two) seem to love to run around trolling about how table selectors are causing the downfall of poker, but that is so far from being the case. Best to think of it as the symptom not the disease. There are far more powerful forces at play that make the poker economy difficult today and those need to be overcome.

How The Poker Economy Is Broken

For the past decade there has been a fundamental problem with the way that the majority of poker operators ran their businesses. Instead of recognizing that they needed recreational players to have a long term sustainable business model, they instead overly focused on high volume regulars. This led them to compete against each other to give out the most in player rewards to players who were in many cases already significant winners at the game. Poker operators would have been far better off reinvesting those dollars toward recreational player rather than wasting them on regulars. If we look today at one of the networks that has had the most success growing their business it is Bovada. Their model is much more attractive to rec players (no rakeback for regs, max 4 tables, and fully anonymous).

In my article on Daniel Negreanu Leaving PokerStars I referenced an interview he did where he basically said the exact same thing that I am. A classic example of the broken model is that many operators are raking microstakes games at an absurdly high level and rapidly driving away new players. Over the next 5-10 years I would expect a significant transformation to take hold across the poker industry. Only once this broken model is repaired will we once again start to see growth in the industry – dare we dream for another poker boom…..

Table Selecting Strategy

Seat selection is incredibly important and you want to sit as close to the left of a weak player as possible. Why? Because it will allow you to maximize the # of times that you are able to play pots against this weak player with position. As we all know position in poker is incredibly important. In many ways your position matters more than your absolute hand strength. Ideally you will be able to play in a highly exploitive manner with position against a weak player. I discuss position and exploitive play frequently in my book exploitive no limit holdem. A great deal of poker literature in recent years has been focused on GTO poker, which has led many players to take their eye of the ball of what is important. I am a huge fan of GTO (but its applications are limited), and I have found through many years of experience in this game (see my article a Insights After A Decade In Poker) that the more creatively and exploitively a player thinks about the game the better they will do.

An important part of table selection strategy involves getting the Jesus seat. You will frequently hear this term and it simply refers to the seat to the immediate left of a weak player. It is the most profitable or least unprofitable seat (depending on your perspective) seat to be in. Generally the only way to guarantee you will get the Jesus seat is to have tables up already that are being played in and join when a weak player joins. Unfortunately, this can also be incredibly time consuming and one needs to weigh the benefits of table selecting in poker with the amount of time and mental energy that is consumed.

Best of luck at the tables! Oh and please pickup a copy of my book :).

-ThePokerCapitailst (No nonsense, no ads, straight talk on poker)

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