I'm a rec player, so it's nearly always a bunch of unknowns. I tend to play a very tight game for several orbits, until I can work out tendencies, and dynamics but I'm interested if anyone does anything different at tables where they don't know anyone?

Fold.

Pay attention.

Watch what people show down.

Talk.

These two.

Once you accurately ID and profile your villains, you then bluff, extract max value, and/or something in between.

Watch for who limps alot and who calls dry boards too often

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Take it for granted they all know how to play at least as well as you until they prove differently.

No. Most 1/2 and 2/5 players are really bad. Until proven otherwise, I'd assume that you are better than most of the other players at the table, particularly on the weekend.

IRTM pretty much nailed this thread. That being said, if you pick up a decent hand in late position, then you should be raising.

I actually stereotype people pretty immediately as soon as I sit down and i force myself to come up with short descriptors or them and type them into my phone (people think I'm texting). Example:

seat 1, old man coffee, never plays a hand
Seat 2, only cares about the drink table, has limped every hand
Seat 3, raised half the time, same size

Etc.

I change these as new info comes in.

All of the above of course but I'll add a few meta game things I look for and my general plan starting out at a new table.

Identify the "scared money". These might be guys on one buy in not sticking it in light and willing to fold marginal spots a little easier than others.

Identify who's stuck and steaming.

Pay attention to how many hands are going to showdown.

Observe blind defending ranges of the 3 players to my left.

Observe limp/calling and opening ranges and quickly establish a preliminary confirmation of my stereotypes (is OMC really OMC are the stations avg. or exceptionally stationy etc.)

I chat it up a bit while mostly folding early on. Try to remind myself to establish a little bit of a wining image before opening it up.

It doesn't take but a couple orbits to have a solid sense of the general profile of villains. And during that first half hour learning about villains play I'm not getting in much trouble because I'm playing fairly tight.

"Hello everyone......[as I'm sittin' down].....My name is Zuneit & I'll be your resident shark for the duration of your session here at table 47........Now, who are the LAGs at the table? I prefer to feast on them first."

Grunch: Play ABC and for value only until you get a good feel for your Vs.

Everyone who doesn't stand out is loose-passive until proven otherwise.

Use (but don't overuse) stereotypes to give you clues about certain players until you get enough info on them to have a better read.

You can get a great feel for the dynamic in a short time by observing show-downs and (very importantly) what people say about hands/each other, especially after show-downs.

Hope not to be dealt QQ / KK before your chips arrive.

It's probably not +EV, but I'm a rec player too, I'll usually buy in for 100bb even if the game allows higher. Granted, I play online a lot, so I'm most comfortable with 100bb

I tend to play really straight forward ABC poker until I've got a good idea of who is doing what

Or the alternative route:
One night about 3 months ago I was playing and a 30s-ish guy sits to my immediate left. He straddles UTG when it gets to him for his 1st hand. Gets a few calls, he pops it big, it gets l/rr from a 50bb shorty, and V insta calls and immediately flips over Q7s (he actually sucked out 2 pair). Literally half the morons at the table proceed to call him down with literally anything, or call his 3!s pre every time. Except he never seemed to bluff after that one hand. It was actually pretty amazing to come in, make a ridiculous show off move and then proceed to just get paid in spades for the next several hours playing basic abc poker

Some people do that. They use their first buy-in to build a maniacal image, then proceed to play solid poker throughout. I wouldn't advise it, but hey, whatever works for you.

First impressions are hard to shake off for the majority of people.

While this is true, the turnover at a poker table often makes advertising completely useless within an hour or so.

Is it fair to say if someone shoves on you on flop or turn they have at least X? I haven't come across any players that really bluff or shove with a single pair but I don't play live much

Several orbits is way too long in my opinion. I feel I know my opponents a lot better after watching them for less than an orbit.

I'll be less likely to make really marginal aggressive plays before the flop (I might fold a really marginal hand instead of raising it in late position), but other than that I won't have the mindset that I should be tight and passive.

Also I'm a tight player anyway so just playing my main game will result in me folding and watching my opponents a lot. I'll play a lot more hands in position, but that's what I normally do. It's nothing different.

When you play at a certain level you can have a good feel for how most opponents will play in many situations. One poster had it right in the thread when he said a lot of opponents are loose and passive.

I don't think anyone suggested being passive.

I develop reads by seeing hands go to showdown and working out their thought processes, so I generally play somewhat tight-passive so that more hands go to showdown. If I could table-select, the best table for me is probably the one with the highest showdown percentage.

I remember Brunson saying in an interview, that he could size up a table full of unknown players at the table within 15-25 minutes in his prime, which is about an orbit or so. However, he didn't say that he knew his opponents "a lot better", like you did. He said he knew exactly what type player they were. I long for the day I can size up a table full of unknowns that quickly.

Before I play a single hand I know close to nothing about my opponents. So knowing them "a lot better" isn't really a bold claim IMO. A lot of the bad players make a lot of really obvious errors over and over again and they're easy to spot. The most obvious one is they keep calling PF. You can also see how players handle their chips and cards, how many chips they have, how quickly they act, etc.

I think it's easier to get a decent feel for the table in an orbit or less than it is to get a feel for individual players. I'd like to know as quickly as I can if I'm at a wild, aggressive table, a passive table, a tight table, etc.

I think I could quickly figure out what type of player my opponents are in a single hand in some cases (when I see their cards at showdown), but I don't know about the entire table in 1 orbit.

Also it takes me longer to size up a 2-5 table if it's kind of tight. The tighter players don't play as many hands so I don't get to watch them play many hands. They could be fishy or they could be really good. It's not like I can just watch them limp in hand after hand and quickly realize they are just another loose-passive player. At 1-2 or 1-3 NL I can also start off assuming that everyone sucks but that assumption isn't as true in the 2-5 games in Vegas (although it is mostly true in the games with a $500 max but I've found games with $1 max to be tougher).

I took what you said as "I have a pretty good idea of the type of players I'm up against" while I took what Brunson was saying as: "I felt like I was playing in a home game with players I've known for years"

When I sit down at a table, the first thing I'm trying to do is determine which V's with the biggest stacks are making the most expensive mistakes the most often.

Big stack * expensive mistakes * high frequency = high profit.

I'm then working to figure out exactly how I'm going to exploit each one of these players and their mistakes to make the most money.

In order to free up as much mental capacity as possible for this, I generally play tight pre (even OTB). I prefer to decline marginally profitable hands and situations initially so that I can gain more info to maximize profits subsequently. My post play incorporates whatever information I've gleaned up to that point with the usual emphasis on selective aggression.