However you play your cash games online, whether you adopt a very tight, cautious approach or a more aggressive style, table selection is incredibly important.
Many online poker rooms will display various table stats in the lobby. These generally contain two pieces of useful information.
- Average pot. The size of the average pot is a superb indication of how loose or tight the game is. In general, the bigger the pot, the looser the game. Try and compare average pot sizes with different tables of the same stake and select the table which suits your style the most
- Percentage of players seeing the flop. Again, this gives us a great indication of how tight or loose the table is. The higher the percentage, the looser the table.
The time invested here before joining a game is well worth it. Your bankroll will thank you for your hard investigative work.
In the next article about online cash games, we will take a look at using note taking features to our advantage and how to avoid being 'labelled' by other players.