Table Selection

Still not played my $50 sng yet.I was trying to get some sng practice in by playing a couple of $5 turbo sng's.I was disconnected during the first one.Horrible to be gazing at the screen wondering why an opponent is taking so long over a simple decision and then realising it's not them but me that's been booted! Came back to find half my stack left and still managed 2nd place.Only managed 6th in the other one. I was actually fairly calm over the disconnection.Doubt that would have been the case if it had been my $50 shot!


I used the title "table selection" as a reminder to myself to stop being so damn lazy and find a table that suits my style.The first 6 max ( $50 buy in) table I sat down at was tight.After 10 minutes I checked the lobby and found the table with the highest average pot ( $19) and moved there.Vpip for anyone not familiar ( probably wasting my words here) stands for Voluntarily put in pot percentage and is a figure used to determine how tight/loose a player/table is.Using Pokertrackers gametime plus I can bring up an overlay which shows the vpip aswell as the percentage of times a player raises preflop and other useful stats.

My second table last night had ideal table conditions.No names but here were my tables stats:

VPIP Preflop raise % Number of hands

85% 33% 34

29% 0% 59

71% 9% 34

69% 15% 26

33% 11% 80

33% 6% 34 ( me!)

One average player,one rock and two loosey gooseys made for a fine table and $59 profit in less than an hour.

The pokertracker 6 max autorate rules I use are excellent but I think they must be made for $100 nl upwards as my average Vpip of 33% is actually relatively tight for the micro-stakes 6 max tables but PT classes me a slightly loose player.

Very loose tables like last nights require a certain style I feel.Forget about bluffing most of the time.I actually tried a semi-bluff post flop which would probably have worked at my first table but resulted in the whole table calling ( apart from the rock who'd folded preflop).That made me smile and realise how much a "horses for courses" game poker is.I do post hand histories here on occasion and enjoy reading "You decide" type posts but in general I think you have to be there in the moment to be able to take in the zillion factors,conscious or unconsious,that go into making a decision.

I made a lot of ( for micro stakes) profit late last year by selecting the wildest tables I could and playing a very specific style to maximize my profits.On reflection I think my bottle went too quickly after a bad run and I should have stuck to my gameplan.The variance and stress levels/burnout factor may be high but the rewards are worth it.It's probably done my game no harm to get used to other types of 6 max games but it's not been as profitable and the bottom line is that $$$ earnings are how we keep score in this game.

Wee bit worried that hackers managed to hack the chat at Ladbrokes again last night.It happened the other night too and the poker manager was soon sending messages reassuring people their accounts are safe.Last nights pop-up was directing people to a "ladbrokes winners" website where the first to open link would get $10k.Once again a counter message from Ladbrokes appeared telling players to ignore the pop ups and not to click link.Ladbrokes is a huge name in the UK and I'm not overly concerned but the fact that it's been hacked at all let alone twice doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

Laddys is currently my favourite site to play at but I'm also unhappy at their rakeback offer for May as it only applies to nl players at $1-$2 and above.I know rakeback doesn't exactly offer fortunes to micro-limit players but anything is better than nothing and even just now there's 5 tables from 20 at $1-$2 that have a lower average pot than the $.25-.50 table I was at last night.

Ok enough for today.Go select a juicy table....