Hi all. We know a good game when we see one, and we have to, at the very least, see ourselves as better than at least three of the players at a table to sit down and play. If we're at a table where nearly everybody is drinking it up and having a laugh, this is very obviously a great table and our edge has to be massive here (at least 5%). On the other hand, if half the players are wearing headphones and hoodies, we would expect less action at this table. There are very few instances where I request a table change at a game like 1/2 (rocks and nits), but for the most part there's a good edge margin at nearly all 1/2 games.

How do you estimate your edge, both at first glance, and after a few orbits of play? Do you ever sit down and feel outmatched?

At 1/2? No. I've sat down at reg-infested 2/5 games in Vegas where I felt uncertain that I was +EV.

This is all dependent on your skill level and comfort in different types of games, as well as your psychological roll, though. We likely have overall winners at 1/2 in this forum who are -EV on certain tables and some players who never feel outmatched at any table below 10/25.

I dont think its an important assessment to make. Its more constructive to assess individual playersand figure out where their leaks are.

Also, headphone and hoodie players are very often awful. Its a leak to expect those players to be good. I lost a lot of ev in value bets before realising this.

When I sit at a table, I have to believe that I'm at least the second best player at the table. Everyone else is going to have to prove to me that they are better. If I ever thought I was the in the bottom half of the table in skill, I'd leave immediately.

As for the question, the old poker adage, "If after a half hour you can't spot the fish, you're it," is still a good rule of thumb.

At first glance i analyze players based on: how comfortable they look, how they handle their chips, what they're wearing, how focused they are on hands they aren't involved in, beverage choice and overall energy and demeanor.

After a few orbits I look for +EV table dynamics: limping, straddling, pots going multiway, people stuck multiple buy ins, spewy bluffs, animosity, ego, tilt, alcohol, loud conversations, etc.

The more of these characteristics I see, the more edge I think I have at the table.

Lately I haven't felt outmatched per se but sometimes I'll get some solid, thinking, aggro player on my left and I'm forced to adjust by tightening up my ranges and getting involved in the 3bet/4bet, floating/barreling dynamic with them.

First question: Am I mentally fit?

Second question: Are the pots big enough, often enough, to overcome the rake? That's the 1st thing you have to overcome.

Third question: Do I have good position on the players I need position on?

Fourth question: How many hoodies, sunglasses, earplugs are at the table? The more, the merrier. Especially if they're expensive....means $$ in their pockets..........usually. I know a winning 2/5 NL player, long-term, over the last 5 years, who use to wear a headset & listen to music. Sometimes just have them on with the music off to muffle the noise. One day, about 1 1/2 years ago, he forgot them & realized how much his senses were muffled with that headset. Hasn't worn them since. Then again, I saw a player at a 2/5 @ MD Live 2 weeks ago with 3k in front of him with earplugs.

Generally speaking, their egos are hampering their game. Kinda' like saying all Asians are LAGs [which is far from the truth] until they've proven otherwise.

Fifth question: How many players, that I know, like to slowplay & limp in EP with AK & even AA/KK? Or put in a min-raise to $6 -$8. The old farts........

6th question: How many players look like the money they have on the table is pretty much all they have to gamble with?

7th question: Who are the players passing the time waiting for a 2/5 game?

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. I luv Patmister1's contributions Especiall: Overall energy & demeanor. How comfortable they look & focus are good for sizing up unknowns.

At first glance all you can really look at is stack sizes, amount of alcohol, and of course anyone you've played with before. Small stacks, no booze, and a bunch of serious faces usually mean it's a crap table. Trying to stereotype too much based on age/dress/race is usually not worth it.

I've never really tried to "estimate my edge" at a table. There's got to be a table selecting 101 around here somewhere, right? I'll give you my few sentences. First, look for known fish/whales and try to sit on their right. Look for big stacks. Look for pots with lots of limpers. Move towards those tables. Avoid tables with too many players you've pegged as good. I only play a few hours a week, but on any given night I fathom I already have reads on half the room, and since 5 tables are usually going, that's a solid 20ish people I know what to expect from. If it's a new room, just take whatever the first seat you can get is and then table and seat select from there.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...ction-1563491/

Wtf does a 5% edge over the table mean?

I don't get to worry about this because I can't usually table select, unfortunately.

Good question. I pulled that number out if my ass. But I do underatand that 5% is big. I guess you could translate it as, every time your opponents put $20 in the pot, they lose a dollar to you.

As far as hoodie/iPhone players go, I didn't mean to imply that they're always tough opponents (many are lolbad), but rather they're generally tighter and more aggressive than your weak-tight garden variety fish.

Bart Hanson had a column in a recent Card Player issue where he alluded to this topic. I agree with him in that you can estimate your edge in terms of BB/hour. If you've played enough hands, you should know what you're making in BB/hour. You also should have a feel for what the average table was like during the period where you established that winrate. If the table is fishier than average, your edge goes up. If it's more competent than average, your edge goes down.

I like to take into account the types of mistakes that people are making and come up with an estimated negative winrate for them. If a guy is limping J9o UTG, I might start his estimate @ -15 BB/hour and see what the rest of his game looks like and adjust it up or down from there. An OMC, I might start @ 0 BB/hour and adjust according to his nuances. There some solid regs where I know they make 5BB/hour. I try to estimate how much is being donating to the table on average.

A handful of times I've played with people where I felt overmatched. I actually enjoy playing with ridiculously good players. It challenges you to play better (as long as there's enough fish to offset them). I played with one guy at Luxor who used to multitable 5/10 online. Dude knew exactly where he was in every hand. It was scary. Hero calls. Sick folds. I learned a lot just watching him.

Notwithstanding "are the games so bad I shouldn't play at all?"...

All that really matters is how the table stacks against other available games.

Your comment that you should be better than at least 3 other players strikes me as being way off if you want to be +EV. Obv it can't be fully quantified and matchup of styles, how deep and bad the worse players are, our position to the best and worst players comes into play. But on balance if you aren't in the top 3 players at a 9 handed table you likely have a neutral to negative expectation considering the rake.

I usually look at how deep the table is, how many hands are going to showdown, are people calling turns and folding rivers, who's stuck and steaming. Are there any noticeably good players who are fairly active and my position relative to them.

I don't see quantifying this in absolute terms very practical.

There is a COTM on table selection you might find helpful.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh....php?t=1563491

Overrated: hoodies, alcohol, gender, race

Underrated: vpip, pot sizes, stack sizes

I think i'm probably the best player at the vast majority of 1/2 games and in the middle of the pack as far as regs go at 2/5. At 1/2 I will play any table but look for big stacks and lots of limping as lots of limping means lots of calling and you can get them to put their big stacks in more easily. At 2/5 I focus more on seat selection, I think I can beat most if not all 2/5 games as long as i'm in a good seat to the left of the regs.

I've never sat at a table where I felt outclassed but I have spent an hour or two in a situation where the table has gotten very 'reggy'. This is characterised by people playing a moderately competent preflop game i.e. lots of raising, no limping, not much overcalling.

I think I gain a lot of my edge because my opponents are generally terrible preflop and don't have the postflop skills to make up for it. So if they play an OK preflop, it makes me assume that my edge just went way down and may in fact be negative given rake and time charge.

Luckily this situation has never persisted long enough for me to need to change tables. The turnover is usually quite high - a couple of regs will leave or change tables, some weaker players turn up, someone gets bored and decides to run over the table raising any two, someone gets tilted and ups their VPIP to 60%, etc. etc.

Gotta imagine that you need to be a top 3 player to be at all profitable in a raked game. At least top 2 to beat minimum wage.

The two things I look at to tell if the game is even worthwhile are stack sizes and how often does a pre flop raise take down the blinds.

My poker room is a reg infested room, so it's pretty easy to tell the good tables from the bad just by looking at who is at the table.

To be honest, my room is getting a *lot* tougher. Yesterday when we had 3 tables going and I knew I definitely didn't want to be at my table, but I also knew I wasn't thrilled about moving to another table either. Used to be a time where I always knew I was far and away the best player at the table, and I'm a very mediocre player. Nowadays, I find I'm often sitting at tables where I'd consider 2 players on par with myself, one or two very difficult (not that they are necessarily winning players, but they make my life difficult, especially as stacks get deeper), and 2 players not outright easy money, all just battling over the money from a couple of outright bad players. My guess is that these types of tables are barely beatable for a mediocre player like myself.

Gskyisfalling,imoG

Gotta stay ahead of the curve. If you aren't improving, you're falling behind. You could easily see the same lineup in 6 months and think, "2 ABC players, 2 weak tight players, 2 LAG tards and 3 whales." You can't control the environment, but you can control your own skill level.

You can have limited control over which environment you immerse yourself in, though.

Ya, others have said similar, but in terms of winning big $$$, I kinda disagree with this. The vast majority of our big $$$ simply comes from the poor players; remove those poor players, and it doesn't matter whether we are a percentile better than our opponents as we'll all simply get crushed by the rake.

Gimo,IknownoteveryoneagreesG

Yea I can't agree with that. The upper echelon can generally maintain a solid win rate imo. You can make nearly as much in tighter games as action games. Imo, it's just that action games are much easier. As long as someone is calling pre-flop raises, there is money available.

That's just not true, I think that, in general, losing players lose way more BB/hour than winning players win. The reason for that is that the skill gap gets smaller and smaller as a player improves. Loosing players can be anywhere from a complete whale to a slightly losing player, it's just impossible to win at the same rate whales are losing.

Therefore, sometimes you might need only one whale at your table to have positive expected value. If it's slightly losing players, than you'll need more.

Hardball talked about table change at 1/2. Even if you have a positive expected value at a certain table, it doesn't mean you don't have a better expected value at another table where there are more weak players. For that reason I usually table change a lot even at 1/2 to make sure I sit at the most profitable table in the poker room (when it's possible).

To evaluate the tables, I don't think it's useful to actually evaluate your exact expected winrate (unless you are going to leave if it's too low at the best table). I usually just give a +5 to whales, +2 to fish, +1 to weak players, 0 to unknown players, -1 to good regs, -2 to solid regs. I add up the numbers for a single table and I choose the table with the highest total (so the highest EV). I picked up that technique I one of David Sklansky's book I believe.

GGs comment is quite spot on IMO. During the poker boom there was a continuous flow of bad players into the poker ecosystem. Not to mention an economy that had people flush with cash. People were losing more and faster and when they did go broke they were being replaced.

In this environment the players who worked on their game some were able to rise well above the average player. But if you observe a typical learning curve you will see that it tends to flatten. Even slower learners can close the gap if they are at least moving along the steep part of the curve.

If the players who go broke aren't being replaced and the players who don't go broke learned through experience how to lose less, that is make less severe mistakes or at least make them less often, there is simply less losses available to be divide among the winners. Of course the rake then represents a larger portion of the losses.

I think online poker has demonstrated this much faster because of multitabling but the dynamic exists live.

That doesn't mean the games are unbeatable, it means they can be beaten for less than when there was more money and more and fishier fish.

Table selection is the single most important thing that you can control that will help your win rate.

It is important to assess individuals but if you had your choice b/w a table with 5 drunks and 5 hooded/sunglasses *******s, which one are you choosing?

Headphones/hoodie guys are often awful but they are never clueless. They are likely tourney players that play too tight pre-flop and always pay off with top pair or an over-pair.

Speaking of table selection, I'm pretty sure I got live bumhunted today. I had a pretty sizeable stack at 1/2 (~1k) and had some 2/5 players switch to my table (LOL).

Link please?

I have to agree with you. The rake at low stakes games is just far too high. Being above average isn't good enough, there has to be bad players donating. My local player pool has basically dried up. No more donators are left.