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New rule - table selection |
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NewbSaibot United States. Jul 08 2009 01:14. Posts 4948 | | |
Table selection: the act of sitting at a table where you are most likely to make the largest profit.
Typical poker theory suggests a pretty basic premise of table selection that says if you can find bad players, profit will follow. But I prefer to look at it as a table where players are most likely to make the biggest mistakes vs YOU, not just poker in general. Mistakes which you yourself can most profitably capitalize on at ALL times, not just the mistake of someone going allin preflop with AQ when you have AA. I think table selection can go beyond just finding the "fishiest" table out there.
For a true grinder, this simply means counting on the laws of poker to come in your favor over the long haul. A player can only limp ace rag so many times before he finally hits 2 pair out of position in a raised pot vs your set. Your job is simply that of a sniper, waiting until the wind is just right so as not to send your bullet off mark, and BAM! You got em. But this can take quite a while, and even then sometimes the natural laws of poker variance will ruin your shot that you have been ever so patiently waiting for.
For everyone else, theres "your edge". Your abilities as a player to know how to get your opponent to do the wrong thing, be that folding when he shouldnt, raising, or even better, calling. This is the definition of a good player and must be learned eventually, at least if your desire is to make it to the top. How you decide to accomplish this is up to you. You can go through the natural poker progression, simply having the information absorbed into your psyche through playing hundreds of thousands to millions of hands, simply picking it up as you go along. Or you can actively seek to attain this knowledge, by putting yourself in the situations that require it, and remembering what happened so it stays in your arsenal of knowledge. Like choosing to pick up a book and learn a language, or simply moving to Japan and listening to people talk, this is my goal.
You see I have neither the time nor patience to try method number one. I also have some inherent beliefs that it’s simply not necessary, and potentially disastrous for your learning (i.e. becoming robotic and having a hard time unlearning and readjusting to radically different play at higher stakes). To achieve this I have thrusted myself into multi-level thinking by playing exclusively one table at a time, focusing on every single hand, even hands I am not playing in, and then using what I observe to play as many pots as possible against people. You know, the whole "play the man, not your cards" thing. Of course having a good hand helps, because sometimes somebody just aint foldin, and thats where you want to capitalize on this.
So how does this all relate to table selection? Well, as mentioned earlier, a typical grinder may seek out the easiest table to play at, where he can rely more on his cards and an opponents inability to play correctly vs them. However if your goal is to strictly play the player, and use your cards only as backup when things dont go your way, your criteria for finding a table changes dramatically. To date, I have had my best success at tables consisting mostly of nits and tags, with the least amount of "fish" possible. If I'm going to play a certain way against a certain player just because it's him, I have to be able to predict what he's going to do. Unlike other forms of competition where you lack information such as STARCRAFT, predicting someone's action and knowing what hand they have can still result in a loss. In starcraft, if you play against a newbie who puts one scv on each mineral patch only, it doesnt matter what he might accidentally end up doing with his strategy, you will simply beat him every time, no matter what. There is no variance, there is no luck, mathematically an inferior player of this magnitude simply cannot win. In poker this is not the case. There is an element of chance. So problem with this lies in the fact that certain players simply NEVER rely on chance. These are the players you can actually play against. The other guys require you to have a hand, which requires you to wait, and which requires you to have money to sustain losses when the best hand doesn’t win.
Due to this standard archetype for playing poker, questions of how much money you really need come in to question. It has been proven many times that one can mathematically play perfect poker, meaning their hand is statistically likely to win, and lose 20 times in a row. Well if this is possible you better be able to reload 20 times at a table. However if you ignore the math, and simply play based upon what you expect your opponent to do, you are less likely to lose as often, simply because if you are right, you win the hand, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter what your hand is, if you KNOW he is going to fold, and I mean know it like a Jamaican psychic, then you are playing perfect poker. Now you can still find yourself in a situation where you know both that your hand is the statistical favorite, AND your opponent will go allin, and still lose, but this will not happen frequently since the odds of a perfect setup occurring at the same time you know what your opponent will do are far more rare. And the times in which you do lose can be easily offset from all the future hands that you will play perfectly.
So back to table selection, if you intend to try to control the outcome of a hand based upon your actions rather than the strength of your cards, you need to find a table where players can be herded around the stable at your discretion. What I have finally figured out shockingly enough, is that this is NOT the fish! I have perpetually held to the accepted advise that I should want to play vs fish so they make mistakes. Unfortunately the kind of mistakes they make are not the kind of mistakes I need them to make in order to win! I need players to fold, or play back at me, not call me to the river with any pair, because clearly I cant win the hand at showdown if I am bluffing and was looking for a fold, the fold another type of player can be expected to make.
There are two types of poker players in this world. Those who care about money, and those who don’t. The players that just don’t care about losing are the players I will not be able to beat, at least not very often. My perfect storm will still come on occasion and I will turn the nut flush vs their straight and win just like anybody else can. But I will lose far too many pots in between battling it out with them as I have no control.
Table selection for me from now on shall consist of one thing and one thing only, table control. If I lose control of the table, I must leave. If I cannot get players to perform a certain action, then I am now playing my cards and my cards only, and if my cards suck I am in some serious trouble. Every few days I sit down at a table which looks juicy, and then mr. maniac fish comes along averaging out 80% vpip for over an hour. My initial thought has been “yesss!!”, and yet every single time I lose to them, and lose BAD. Consider the following show of results today:
| | Hi, my name is yallan and I play 100% vpip for the first 98 hands. I finally cooled off to a paltry 75.5% vpip as players adjusted to me. |
These situations simply do not happen vs thinking players. You will almost never find yourself involved in spots like these vs someone who you know is actually making serious attempts to win the game. While these spots favored me, I was unlucky and I cant have that right now. I am far less likely to have “unlucky” setups against thinking players. With the above hands I had no ability to dictate his actions, I lost my ability to know when I even had the best hand. As a result, I was flying blind. Flying blind can be ok if you are capable of sustaining significant losses. Flying blind with a bad hand is probably not a good idea no matter how big your bankroll. But flying blind without the ability to let poker variance fuck you is a recipe for disaster. You simply cannot count on your ability to survive 6 or 7 flips in a row if that is all you can afford, which is why I put myself in situations that will hardly ever result in a flipping scenario.
So, as I continue to show impressive results one day, and then scratch my head in disbelief as an obvious fish rapes me the next day, I think I have finally figured out what I need to do. And that is AVOID THE FISH. That’s right, tuck my tail between my legs and run away to find another table. Because ultimately it has nothing to do with him playing poorly, it has everything to do with me playing properly. If some experienced pro gives you trouble at the table, there is nothing wrong with leaving. The table is –EV for you, regardless of the reason. I find playing against 70+ vpip maniacs to be –EV for me. Not because I refuse to tighten up, but because even if I do tighten up I can still lose, repeatedly, and I cannot afford that. So I will find another table, a +EV table. For me +EV will mean a table in which I feel I have a grasp on player tendencies, I know what they will do given a certain line of action, and then I can use that to control the hand. I don’t care if Phil Ivey sits at my table, if he folds every time I check-raise then I am in control and know what to do when he doesn’t fold. But if I am at a table with a fish and he just plays completely random, I can only play the best hands to insure my likelihood of winning, and even then, as said countless times by now, I might not win.
So the moral of this story is that I will make serious attempts like never before to actively and precisely table select at ALL times during the game. Not just find a table and stick with it forever. The moment I notice a shift in the game, one in which I cannot or do not want to adapt to, I simply must find another table. This will probably happen far more frequently that most people switch tables. I can end up switching tables every 60-80 hands, whereas most people put in around 200-300 before deciding maybe they should move on.
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*sigh*
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umm practicing table selection is a good habit (leave tables when you don't have a good edge, etc)
but to avoid fish???
i mean a lot of money comes from fish who limp in and just wanna see the flop and fold to a cbet when they miss
if you're losing to calling stations, then you just need to stop betting into them when it's not smart to
sure some run good, but in the long run, we should be winning so much money from them |
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NewbSaibot United States. Jul 08 2009 01:36. Posts 4948 | | |
| | On July 08 2009 00:29 hellokittery wrote:
if you're losing to calling stations, then you just need to stop betting into them when it's not smart to
sure some run good, but in the long run, we should be winning so much money from them |
Well the problem with this I have to simply stop playing hands, which kinda throws my whole gameplay out the window. And I cant tolerate the bad beats when I finally connect and get outdrawn. I would rather play at another table where I can be more involved with lots of small pots. I think this is more equitable for me. |
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NewbSaibot United States. Jul 08 2009 01:40. Posts 4948 | | |
Oh and for anyone wondering what in the FUCK I was doing at a 2/4 table, this was a CAP NL game on FTP and I was experimenting with a pseudo-short stack style of play, which seems to be the general basis of how people play CAP NL anyway. Since I was willing to play with $120 stacks today, I felt a 120 cap game was fine. It actually kinda sucked because as this donk would chip up and inevitable lose some, he would never actually get punished and drop all his money at the table. Unlike standard shortstack play, you can only double up once or twice before you are no longer shortstacked and have to leave. This guy could just relentlessly suckout over and over and never do so bad as to go bankrupt at the table. |
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joLin United States. Jul 08 2009 01:40. Posts 3818 | | |
its not going to be more profitable. if you cant outplay fish what makes you think youre going to outplay regs roflmao. also why are you calling A5o and K6o preflop? this is probably why youre losing.
and i dont know why you have problems with 'controlling actions of other players'. i usually control the actions of fish, i make them call me with worse hands. |
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| YoUr_KiLLeR @ TL | Last edit: 08/07/2009 01:43 |
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bad beats will still happen when you play regs though
but GL on your plan if you feel it's best and hope it goes well |
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SpeedyJack United States. Jul 08 2009 01:47. Posts 618 | | |
I think you just have huge FPS and are taking advantage of the fact that the regs/nits who actually are winning players usually don't get too far out of line because that's the easiest way to win consistently.
You got the money in poorly and slowplayed almost all of the above hands.
In time the good regs will mark you as having FPS and call you down exactly like the 70VPIP guys do. |
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