Choosing tables for cash games

I've hardly ever played cash games, and certainly haven't played any since I've been trying to absorb lots of information from this site. I vaguely remember people listing a whole set of relevant things that we should look for when selecting which tables to play at, and I think it included things that I didn't understand (VPP$P?)

So I'm sitting at Ultimatebet looking at their cash tables (and hoping nobody can see my hole cards ), considering joining, and I would start at $.01/$.02. All I can see listed for the tables is average pot, flop percentage and hands/hour

1. What criteria should I be looking for, please, for my ideal table?
2. Do other sites offer more statistics than the three at Ultimatebet?
3. Do Ultimatebet offer more statistics that I need to select via options?

Are some of the stats that you guys use in choosing tables coming from PokerTracker?

Yes they are from pokertracker and I must say I kind of want to find this out too. All I do on the tables is look for the biggest pot but the right stats are whats important.

FYI, VP$IP is what you were talkin about, its the % of time a person voluntarily (meaning not checking in the BB and not posting the SB) puts money in the pot. Thats pretty much how often a person is playing a hand, the higher the better?

PFR is pre flop raise%, im sure that speaks for itself but thats how often a person raises preflop.

Id like to know what everyone thinks and if you have any more questions just ask.

I'm not %100 sure what info Ultimatebet gives you, but I'm generally looking for high average pot size and high players per flop %, or if I see someone I know is a fish I'll take a seat too.

There's table selection software out there (spadeit.com, sixthsense, etc) but I have yet to invest in one so I couldn't give an opinion.

There are also free scripts for table selection and buddy lists that you can find on overcards.com.

The sites that I currently have cash at are Titan, Pacific Poker and Ultimatebet. Unfortunately I only have the beta of PokerTracker, and I think it only works with PartyPoker (my 73c there doesn't really help ), Pokerstars or Full Tilt

PT does nothing for table selection unless you have a program like Spadeye or sixthsense along with it. PT provides the stats, and table selection software finds the fish by way of your database (stats).

OK so that wouldn't actually help anyway, until I had played a reasonable number of hands and had built up a PT database that it could use...

I am pretty much the same as this. In PS software if you right click on the 'stakes' tab you can filter these stats easily which makes table selection easier.

Oh wow, never knew you could do that, thanks.

^^^^^^^^^^^

do what exactly?

You mean filter by stakes then sort by criteria? (ie avg pot etc?)

playing the cash games u should never play at a table that is not in your $ bracket if u cant afford it DONT PLAY IT just play the amounts u are comfortable with and you will win more ... works for me!

i think pokerstars is best by far when it comes down to any aspect of the game and easier to win also .....just my opinon!!!!!!gl

Thanks, but that seems to bear no relevance to the questions that I asked

Two things spring to mind:

1. I don't have any money at Pokerstars, but I have money at the three other sites I have mentioned
2. Pokerstars also has thousands of PokerTracking poker geniuses playing there

no problem

hit the nail on the head Chuck

lol, look at the profile info, he's a 40-year-old male.

i use poker edge to look up playing style while i wait on the blinds to get to me .and try to pick a good seat that way not sure it helps

Poker edge is REALLY inaccurate. I wouldn't trust it at all.

It is also illegal at pokerstars, not sure about other sites. If you use poker-edge, they could theoretically close your account and confiscate all funds. Most likely you'll receive a warning the first time instead, but by using it you are violating their terms.

oh didn't no it was illegal ,did not purchase it just look up screan names while waiting. is somwhat inaccurate just use as guidelines because it's free info. i play at UB

sixthsense (google is your friend) is now free for anyone playing 25NL and below and/or .25/.50 LHE and below.

Will it work with the new PT3, I wonder?

now you got me scared because i been putting play style in notes . why would that be wrong but poker tracker and all that other software be ok
please explain .

They currently only support TableRatings - Online Poker Table Selection Tool is all that I use now. Free.

As of Jan 25 it only supports v2, however they say it will support v3 soon.

And they also support PokerStars.

This is fine. Basically anything you observe (or theoretically could observe) being recorded is ok. That's why PT and PAHUD are both legal. poker-edge uses stuff you haven't recorded yourself. That's why it's illegal. So you can keep on storing whatever you want in notes, you just can't share notes between multiple users and DEFINITELY can't use a massive database with data collected from hundreds or even thousands of users.

NoWF, when looking thru the tables for which one to play, check out the guys that are multitableing, try and stay away from them they will only play the goods and bet aggressive when they have them,note them.

Actually I was noting which players were multi-tabling last night (I was multi-tabling too), and some of them were ones I had noted down as "loose" while a couple were very good players

The thing that made it even more complicated was that quite a few people were presumably using Short Stack Strategy and were only buying in for ten cents a time, so it was more difficult to track how well they were doing financially. Also they could go all-in preflop and then I was left with lots more rounds of betting if I wanted to be there for the showdown, so I had to commit far more to the pot than them

The fact that the short-stackers were so much more willing to go all-in before the flop largely explained why those tables had such high percentages, also I had the feeling that there was some collusion and/or multiple accounts involved, as there seemed to be various users with quite similar names, one would leave the table then another would appear, or one would show as sitting out then another that had been sitting out would immediately become active again. I'm probably being paranoid as this is my first venture into cash tabling, but things did not seem straightforward

Also every half an hour or so I would check out which tables had high percentages and quite often the situation had changed radically, so I would end up moving to a much higher percentage table, which also complicated matters. Some of the loose players were also changing tables, some were changing tables more frequently than I was

I'm sure as I become more experienced most of these things will all make sense to me, but at the moment it feels as if there's quite a lot of different factors to take into account, and I don't even have the complexity of PokerTracker readings to deal with yet! I think it's worth clarifying what we mean by the word illegal. If it was really illegal (i.e. breaking the law) then it wouldn't be acceptable at some poker sites but not acceptable at others, however clearly we need to be aware of which sites permit it and which don't