3/27/2022

Poker Hand Selection

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Almost as important as selecting the most suitable online poker room, is the selection of the best poker table to play at. Once again the profitability of each table can vary massively, so is it just luck whether or not you pick the most profitable?

Poker Starting Hand Selection
Poker Hand Selection Chart
Poker Hand Selections
Poker Strategy Hand Range Selection

Hand selection, like just about anything else in poker, is going to be dependent upon a number of different factors. You can’t simply say that you should play these hands and those hands while disregarding things like position, stack size, your opponent, and so on and so forth. Poker hands from highest to lowest 1. Royal flush A, K, Q, J, 10, all the same suit. Straight flush Five cards in a sequence, all in the same suit. Strive to improve your hand range construction skills as this is in essence how you will exploit your opponent. Ultimately, with the best hand reading skills, you will come out the biggest winner at the tables. Further Reading: My favourite poker book, Applications Of No Limit Holdem By Mathew Janda covers hand ranges in a huge amount of detial. An Introduction to Hand Selection Before you worry about anything else in poker you have to have rock solid hand selection. Knowing which hands to open and which to fold has to be an automatic skill. This will allow you to think about other things like your opponents’ stats. Starting Hand Selection: Chen Formula: Sklansky Starting Hand Groups. The Chen formula is a system for scoring different starting hands in Texas Hold’em. It was created by Bill Chen for use in the book Hold’em Excellence by Lou Krieger. Bill Chen is also the guy that wrote The Mathematics of Poker.

Well no, there is a logic behind it and in this lesson we are going to look at how to select the most profitable cash game table from the lobby.

What are we Looking for?

We’re looking for the fish, plain and simple. We’re looking for any signs of bad players who play too many hands against the odds and chase, hoping to hit cards on the flop, turn or river to make their hand irrespective of how unlikely it is to happen.

Now in a live casino the only way to do this would be to stand and observe the tables and spot the one with the players who are chasing.

Luckily with online poker this guesswork and time consuming observation is taken away from us, as we are given table statistics in the lobby for each and every table, which is extremely helpful seeing as there can be hundreds of tables to choose from.

Poker Starting Hand Selection

So How do we Choose the Most Profitable Table?

Poker Hand Selection Chart

The first step is to ensure that you are looking at the right tables. In the first stage of this course and the Poker Bankroll Challenge you will be playing at the 5cent / 10cent stake level and throughout this course you will be focused on the No Limit Texas Holdem ring (cash) game tables.

So, from the lobby, make sure you are looking at the ring game tables, and click on the Holdem tab and select the No Limit button just underneath. The tables we are looking for are the 5c/10c tables with 9 players on a table. Throughout this course we will be playing on full tables of 9 or 10 player tables so you can ignore the short-handed (6 player) tables for now.

As you look at the tables available you will see a number of statistics here, lets have a quick look at what they mean:

Players – The number of players sat at the table and the maximum players, eg: “7/9” = 7 players sat down with 2 spare seats.
Stakes – The size of the small blind and big blind and subsequent bets, eg: “5c/10c” = small blind is 5 cents ($0.05) and the big blind is 10 cents ($0.10).
Limit – The type of Poker Betting Limit of the game being played, either No Limit, Pot Limit or Limit (Fixed) – eg: “NL” = No Limit
Type – Poker room specific which will show icons for the type of game it is, for example there might be an icon for webcam poker tables, usually there is a legend explaining the icons at the bottom of the lobby.
Average Pot – Self explanatory, keeps track of all the winning pot values and provides an average pot size as a statistic for the table.
Players / Flop – The average number of players who see the flop, ie: the players that are not folding before the flop and at least call the pre flop bet and see the cards on the flop, eg: “45%” = at a full 9 man table this would indicate that on average 4 players (9 x 45%) see each flop, meaning there is at least 4 big blinds in most pots.
Hands / Hour – This is an indication of the speed of the table and displays the average number of hands that are dealt in each hour, the higher the number the faster the table is acting and getting through more hands per hour.
Wait – If a table is full then you can sign up for the waiting list for that table, as a player leaves, that seat is offered to the next person on the waiting list. This statistic shows you how many people are currently on the Waiting List.

Players per Flop: The Fish-o-meter

The statistic we are interested in to start with is the % of players seeing the Flop, or the Players per Flop column. What this number is telling us is the average % of the players at the table who see each flop. This is our Fish-o-meter as the basic rule of thumb here is that the higher this number is, then the more fish (bad players) the table contains.

Why? Because as you have already learnt, fish chase bad cards, they play hands that they should just fold, and hence you get more players trying to play each flop without any kind of proper hand selection.

A table with a lower percentage would indicate better players, so if you saw a table with 5% then this table has a lot of better players, who play hands selectively before the flop and don’t play with hands they shouldn’t.

As you can see from the screenshot above, there is one table that stands out above the others in the list with a 45% players/flop statistic – this is a really really good table to sit down at, and I would be getting my name on that table’s waiting list as soon as possible.

What we are looking for is tables with a Plrs/Flop % higher than 20%. If you can get greater than 30% then that is even better. The higher the better and the more fishy table.

The screenshot above was taken at 888 Poker and as you can see there are lots of tables above 20% and some over 30%, culminating with that fish stinking 45% table. It’s a similar case at Bovada, and just goes to backup the results of our tests that there are lots of inexperienced players at these two sites where we can make profit.

Pre-flop hand selection in the early stages is one of the
most vital elements of tournament play. If you are playing the
wrong types of hands to start an event, you are probably playing
the wrong hands throughout the tournament all the way till the
end. The exact event that you are playing is going to bear some
relevance in how you hand select, but you should always have a
general range of hands in mind. You shouldn’t be going into any
tournament without a real game plan in mind.

Position

Your relative position is something that you should always be
taking into account. When it comes to deciding which hands you
should and shouldn’t be playing at the start of a
tournament, your position will not matter quite as much as
you might think. The reason for this is that the blinds are
usually going to be disproportionately small when compared to
your stack size.

If you are playing with several hundred big
blinds, you’ll be able to better play in a large number of
pots without exposing yourself to a significant amount of risk.
This is absolutely crucial in all tournament play, minimizing
risk. If you are putting yourself in spots where your stack is
on the line early on but you aren’t in a dominant position, it
means that you are simply making too many mistakes that could
have been prevented. As much as position may not be a massive
factor, you should still give it some attention.

Early position play is never going to be favored. Since the
objective is to play in a lot of pots for a low price, you
should be trying to become the most involved when you have
position on your opponents. One of the reasons why position is
valuable is because it allows you to make moves such as stealing
the blinds and light 3 or 4 bets. In the beginning of a
tournament, however, this isn’t something that you should be
working into your game, and it’s also one of the reasons why
position loses some of its value. Being one of the last to act
will just give you that added edge where your actions don’t face
such unknown results. You can comfortably call behind, check
behind, or whatever you would like to do. Don’t stress out about
position at this stage in a tournament, but don’t totally
discount it either.

Your Stack Size

Your stack size is seldom going to remain static in a poker
tournament like it would in a cash game. You are going to
frequently make adjustments that correspond with the amount of
chips that you have at any given time. You can’t be making plays
that you did when you were short stacked if you now have a
massive stack and vice versa. In the earlier levels of a
tournament, you are likely to be right on par with the rest of
the field or just a bit ahead or behind. There will be those
random times where you double or triple up early, but they aren’t going to be all that common. Stack size isn’t going to play
a massive role in hand selection just as position didn’t.

Hand Ranges

Now that you have a couple of the underlying factors out of
the way, the next step is to consider the actual types of hands
that you are going to play. These are always subject to change
of course, so don’t take them as absolutes.

Any pocket pair is worth seeing a flop with at this stage of
the game. If you can get to the flop for the price of a raise or
less, there’s no reason to be getting out of the way. Your hand
has a fair amount of showdown value built in and it will also
have the potential to stack other players if you can manage to
hit a set. Pocket pairs are always deceptive when they are able
to improve and you can play them without putting your life on
the line when a tournament just begins.

Suited connectors don’t have quite as much value when the
blinds are low. One of the reasons for this is because they rely
heavily on their fold equity and their potential. You aren’t
going to usually be in a position where you can shove over
someone and get them to fold when you land a huge draw. This
isn’t to say that this scenario is necessarily desirable, but
the opportunity isn’t going to present itself regardless. If
you can play in pots with solid suited connectors like 8s 9s,
you should still do it, but don’t expect to win too many massive
pots as a result. It can happen as the event progresses, but
most players just aren’t up for huge pots right away unless it’s a cooler type situation.

Poker Hand Selections

Big pocket pairs should really speak for themselves. You
should be playing these hands and you should be playing them
fast. When you get a hand like pocket queens, kings, or aces,
your best play is to just raise a fair amount pre-flop and to
fire out as many barrels as you can. You need to be careful that
you aren’t overstepping your boundaries, however, as it can be
easy to get caught up in a hand and to overplay it as a result.
If you start to face real resistance and there’s a good shot
that you are behind, just give it up. A benefit to playing the
early stages of any tournament is that there’s always plenty of
time left to go, so there’s no need to force anything if it
isn’t likely to work.

Poker Strategy Hand Range Selection

Weak hands just aren’t worth playing at all. There are going
to be times in tournaments where they do make sense, like when
you are short stacked and have to shove in late position hoping
for a fold, but they don’t really have any place early on in a
tournament. You are better off just letting
these go until you are absolutely forced to play them, because
otherwise it’s just a waste of time and chips.