Game selection is an essential skill for a successful poker player. While most beginners think that their major goal is to improve their strategic thinking and playing skills in order to increase their earnings, poker professionals say that often the way to better results is simply selection of a poker game that perfectly marches player’s basic skills, behavior and style of play.

Referring to game selection, I neither mean different poker variants like Texas Holdem and 7 Card Stud, nor different types of the same game, like Limit Texas Holdem or No-Limit Texas Holdem. Game selection is more often refers to the limit and table the player decides to play at. Your goal is to select a table and limit, where you have a decent advantage over most of your opponents, because regardless of your skill, it is virtually impossible to make serious money playing against the sharks. In most tight and aggressive games, the rake and the luck factor will make your profits very slim in the long run.

That’s why in order to increase your profits, you must select a game and opponents that you can potentially beat. Now let’s try to find out how to determine which game would meet these conditions. Basically, there are three ways to instantly analyze a particular table and your opponents to determine whether you should join this game or look for a better place.

•  Get to know the auditory. Whether you’re playing in a land-based casino, or in online poker room for a certain period of time, you will get to know most of the frequenters. You can take notes on them, or just keep player profiles in mind. This will help you understand what sort of a game you face and whether it is worth to join in, or just move to another table.

•  Determine the general style of play. Sit out a couple of games and analyze how loose-passive the game is. If you’re a beginner, then you should prefer loose games. Looseness of a game is indicated by the flop percentage (in loose games the flop percentage is high) and showdown percentage (in loose games most hands (even poor ones) see the showdown). Passive games are also pretty good. Passiveness of the game is indicated by raising activity. If players bet passively, even holding really strong hands, then they’ll let you draw out upon them and what is more important, they’ll let you get away with small or at least under average losses, when you lose. Basically, if the game is loose and passive at the same time – join it without any doubts. First of all you can potentially win huge pots even with made hands and secondly you can draw cheaply and lose just a little, if someone has a better hand.

•  Feel the fish. If you spot a table, where the players make lots of foolish mistakes – you’ve caught fish. Join this game and squeeze each and every buck out of them. However, you shouldn’t be too aggressive from the very beginning, because you can scare off your fish. Consider starting rather passively and maybe even let them win a couple of pots in order to turn them on and then bet and raise aggressively to squeeze everything out of their pockets. Players that tend to make many fundamental mistakes are destined to lose plenty of money in the long run and you shouldn’t miss to be at that table, when they do so.

Also recommended:

1. Lobby and Table Selection in online poker rooms
2. Texas Holdem – Your Best Poker Game
3. How to select a suitable Texas Holdem game
4. S.C. judge rules Holdem is a game of skill
5. Playing the Game of Omaha High