How to choose tables in ring games?

Having decided to start microgrinding cash games on FT, I began at the lowest stake (0.01/0.02) due to my modest BR. The question is, which criteria do you apply when picking tables? I am a very tight player, although I am more willing to play marginal hands like small suited connectors in cash games.

There are other things I look at after I sit down having to do w how the other players play, but this is what I look for before I sit down:

1. Largest average pot size
2. Largest % of players in the pot
3. All players (ideally) w at least 100bb in their stacks (i.e., everyone is playing at least $2 at $0.01/$0.02)
4. Full tables

Why are there so many shortstacks when most of the advice I read is to buy-in with 100bb? I saw a guy 16 tabling .02/.05 with a buy-in of 1$ at each table.

A variety of reasons:

1. Some players at small and medium stakes play a specific strategy designed to exploit being a ss. It's an extremely simple strategy - basically, shove all in pf or on the flop if you think villain will fold or if you think your hand is ahead of villain's range - so you can 24table without much effort. This is a high variance not particularly profitable strategy (compared to playing fully stacked for a good player), but you can train a monkey to do it, so... Your guy that's 16 tabling $1 each may be practicing ss strategy in order to move up (generally you need to be playing at least 100nl in order to make this strategy marginally worth the effort, preferably 400nl).

2. Some players are playing scared money and think they're limiting their exposure by buying in short. This is bad logic - your monsters don't get paid off properly because effective stacks are short, and playing scared money is always a losing proposition.

3. Some players are playing their entire bankroll, which is only 20bb's.

4. Some players are just plain bad (at micro, the vast overwhelming majority of ss's are in this category). You'll recognize them by the fact that they voluntarily put money in the pot more than 13% of the time, and the fact that they limp or call. When you only have 20bb's, you need to shove preflop or on the flop, and you don't get hands often enough that warrant shoving to be putting money in the pot more than 13% of the time.

lol sly, was going to comment but....

well you pretty much summed everything up

The topic kinda got beaten to death a month ago, so it was easy to summarize...

Given that I generally don't have a high opinion of ss players at microstakes, why do I avoid sitting at tables with them? Because it limits the hands I can play profitably. You can't play small pocket pairs or suited connectors for 20bb's, you have to stick to big cards and big pairs, and stealing against someone who's likely to shove just sucks.

When I look for a table I:

1) Set filters for the game I'm looking for.
2) Arrange the tables by the see-the-flop percentage.

Then I start at the tables with the highest see-the-flop-percentage and look at all the full games with 0 people on the waiting list.
If the table isn't infested with short stackers I add my name to the waiting list.
Then I repeat the process, moving down the list until I'm on a bunch of waiting lists.

If I pop into a table and then several people leave, I abandon that table as well without ever posting a blind. (The table dynamic has changed too much if a bunch leave.)

I do *not* worry about the average size of the pots because *I* will make the pots bigger. People who like to call are going to call.

I dont care what stakes you are playing i like to pull up about 5 or 6 tables of the stake level im looking to play and just watch them for 15 or 20 minutes before decideing which one to sit down out after factoring in pot sizes and types of players that i would be dealing with and up against at each one, has been a sucess so far from me in building a nice size bankroll from starting out with next to nothing

Seeing as you want to play on fulltilt, I would recommend pulling up some tables for a while and let PT do it's thing. You'll have more of an idea of how each person at each table plays and can have an even more educated pick of your tables.

+1

This is how u should find a table.

To decite if u should stay at a table there are serveral factors to consider the most important of witch imo is having nits on your left(so u can steal there blinds) and maniacs/fish/donks on your right so u have postion on them and makes it easier to exploit them.