Hello all,

I have been realizing that I largely ignore table selection when I play and online and am actually not sure what kinds of things to look for.

I have poked around online but didn't find anything terribly informative, so I thought I would ask here (apologies if there is an old thread, I found nothing of the sort).

So, basically, when selecting a table, I have started looking at a couple of factors, namely the average pot size (APS) and players per flop (P/F).

Personally, I look for a table with a high P/F percentage, anything over 35% and a high APS (anything over 12BB's). To me, this screams lots of loose preflop callers that are willing to chase draws or pay off with medium hands.

If I can't find tables like this, my next choice is a table with a high P/F percentage and the highest APS I can find. In my mind, as APS goes down, it means people are more likely to call with weak holdings, usually OOP, and then c/f when they hit. Really obvious players that can be abused.

Finally, I would love any other opinions. Am I missing other factors? Or am I just way over thinking this and doing what I need to do already?

Apologies if that is the case and this ends up being a waste of a post, it's just been bugging me that I feel like there are other things I could be taking into account here.

I look for multiple villains with 40-100bb stacks, if they aren't obviously short-stacking, and they aren't wise enough to buy-in full, use auto-top-off, they are probably weaker.

I'll do pretty much what you said when seating myself... but a lot of times I will leave a table in a few orbits if it turns out I have a bad seat. You can be at a great table, but the style of the player directly to the left or right of you can make it God Awful.

I prefer to have the TAGs to my right and the fish to my left.

This is backwards.

I would explain why, but this post explains it much better Whitelime on table selecting

SCS is right here, if you're focusing on getting regs to spazz out against you it's by far more profitable to play more pots with the fish. Much more fun to exploit regs on your left when you have the BTN and they're in the blinds anyway

It's backwards at FR but not at 6-max imo. Here's my reasoning:

1) Fish suck and I don't need to use position to profit against them. It helps, but since their game is so bad position doesn't improve my profitability against them as much as it does a semi-decent player

2) Most of the raised pots I will be playing against the fish, I will be on the CO or the Button, which often puts them in the blinds, and fishies love to overdefend blinds. Not to mention they will actually be OOP for these hands.

3) Most of the pots the TAGs will be raising with a wide range are when I'm in the blinds, so I can three bet a much wider range against them and exploit their tendencies easier. When an aggressive player is to my left he will be cutting my throat by three betting me more often than not, and I don't get to play against the fish with my weaker holdings as much.

edit: forgot

4) When I'm in the CO or Button, the TAGs to my right will have the tightest range. This means they're folding out a lot of hands at the same time I want to be opening wider.

Your thinking is very flawed here.


If you are isolating a fish, a tag on your left isn't going to 3 bet you that often. Think about it - he has to risk a lot more of his stack. So even if you have to raise and fold occasionally to a 3 bet, you'll more than make up for it the times you get a heads up pot in position against a loose passive fish.

If the tag is to your right and fish on the left, you can either call a tag's opening to keep the fish in and risk a multiway pot with hands that play better or heads up, or you can get in a 3 betting war with a tag regular and shut out the fish from the pot.

Money flows from right to left. Which do you think is more profitable? Playing pots with tags or with fish?

*shrug* think what you'd like. I'm 100% positive the meta from a 2005 post when 6-max was just beginning still applies...

My thinking comes from observation of the tens of thousands of 6-max hands I've played in the last 2 months... terrible sample






I dunno... I think the whole thing about this stems from most people's attitudes that you can only profit off of loose passive players, which isn't true in the least. Or worse the attitude that you can't profit off of a wining player, which is also reeeally not true. I mean how much time do a lot of online players and forum participants spend to develop a tight aggressive style that almost always basically boils down to a crazy similar formula between these players. You are sitting there with your gameplan, and it's a roadmap to other's game plans as well. They have small variances but they're all pretty much the same. Are you telling me you can't look at that roadmap and figure out exactly how to crush that gameplan?

When you're choosing a seat for position purposes, you're spending a valuable asset. Can you use that asset better against an opponent who will make unknown choices, or against an opponent that you can pinpoint what he's doing? Given, if you take the "backwards" approach that I take you have to know what you're doing to utilize it properly, but it has so much more potential.

Temp, I think you're overrating a lot of the reasons having position on good players is good. I table select insanely and I was in the camp of keeping good players to my right, I have completely switched in the last 2 months to the other camp. Now I table select and seat select like a champ, it is ridiculously easier to get stacks from fish when you are in position against them all the time. Being on their left you will be in position much more frequently.

Maybe you have had good success doing it your way, but you've probably gotten better at poker too and that's a big reason for winning. Make an effort to always sit on left of the fish and see how it turns out. I find that the okay regs that don't like regs on their left just play poorly OOP and in 3b/4b pots so they get flustered and play poorly with an aggro reg on their left. Instead of fixing that leak they choose to just put regs on their right and lower their winrate a ton if they could just control tilt/learn how to play against aggro players on their left.

Knowing how a solid winning player plays and having his "road map" is far less useful than knowing someone sucks and plays way too many hands. Just because you can't pinpoint the 5-6 most likely hands they have doesn't mean you don't have a road map for their seemingly unpredictable play. Something like "polarized river bets" is a lot less valuable than "monkey 15bb/100 loser".