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Table Selection: When To Rack Up And Leave


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Sort of a spin off topic from another curent Thread where I spoke about leaving a game because of a Super LAGgard who had position on me.With so much Strategy talk, not many people talk about when it is time to leave a table.You hear about "table selection" and "finding a table you can beat" but most of that discussion is focused on finding Fish, not in leaving a table or the competition against which you'd rather leave than play against.I left this very juicy Live Casino game partly because I was tired, but also because a strong LAGgard was sitting two seats to my left. He had decided to focus on me (and my stack). His action was interferring with my ability to play my game and control the table to my advantage. Rather than try and change my play to try and beat his game, I racked my chips and called it a night.What conditions (other than odors!) will make you leave a game or request a seat change? Particularly in a Live setting what do you consider?

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It's very easy.You leave when you don't have an edge.You change seats if you can increase your edge.If you aren't playing your best, if you feel you're making mistakes, you leave. If you feel like you don't match up well against a certain type of opponent, you change seats, or leave the table, it's easy.

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It's very easy.You leave when you don't have an edge.You change seats if you can increase your edge.If you aren't playing your best, if you feel you're making mistakes, you leave. If you feel like you don't match up well against a certain type of opponent, you change seats, or leave the table, it's easy.
I actually managed to not pay a big blind when a certain dealer was at my table once at Turningstone. He let me move every time before I posted and he never remembered to make me post. He came back twice during my session, and I was very happy. That can be a good reason to move :)The people at my table thought I was being cute and were laughing because I kept moving around and talking to different people, but I had a devious intention muahahahha
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It's very easy.You leave when you don't have an edge.You change seats if you can increase your edge.If you aren't playing your best, if you feel you're making mistakes, you leave. If you feel like you don't match up well against a certain type of opponent, you change seats, or leave the table, it's easy.
I would be willing to bet that the OP already knows these things. Knowing when to get up is fairly rudimentary: when you get taken out of your comfort zone or you feel you are being outplayed. Having the discipline to do so is what takes effort.I'm understand the situation you described... I usually get annoyed if someone is raising lots of hands, but only if I get the sense that they are semi-competent.
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I would be willing to bet that the OP already knows these things. Knowing when to get up is fairly rudimentary: when you get taken out of your comfort zone or you feel you are being outplayed. Having the discipline to do so is what takes effort.I'm understand the situation you described... I usually get annoyed if someone is raising lots of hands, but only if I get the sense that they are semi-competent.
Exactly, not a terribly helpful response from our Moderator - I'd almost just rather he come right out and call me retarded. Also, I believe Zach is primarily (although not exclusively) an on-line player. While the on-line prespective is interesting and the "pure" view of seat selection WITH player stats is interesting. In Live play it is far more difficult to switch seats/tables. Your action is much more explicit. You have to make a formal request and the selection of available seats is FAR more limited. So the decision isn't just: "Its very easy..." And even in the on-line world this is sort of a condescending answer without much detail. Anybody actually THINKING about - or better yet able to communicate the thought process of - seat selection and changing rather than just leaving when you "don't have an edge" or changing seats to "increase your edge"?
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Exactly, not a terribly helpful response from our Moderator - I'd almost just rather he come right out and call me retarded. Also, I believe Zach is primarily (although not exclusively) an on-line player. While the on-line prespective is interesting and the "pure" view of seat selection WITH player stats is interesting. In Live play it is far more difficult to switch seats/tables. Your action is much more exlicit. You have to make a formal request and the selection of available seats is FAR more limited. So the decision isn't just: "Its very easy..." And even in the on-line world this is sort of a condescending answer without much detail. Anybody actually THINKING about - or better yet able to communicate the thought process of - seat selection and changing rather than just leaving when you "don't have an edge" or changing seats to "increase your edge"?
Meh, not really. For me, as is the case for most players when playing live, they drove out there to play and are not going to be bothered with 'game selection' or 'table selection'. I drove an hour and a half, I'm playing. The good thing is live is much softer than online so it's usually not a problem. I do now exercise a little bit of restraint (when I play live it's usually 2-5nl $400 max) and look at which table is best. Usually on the weekends they have two games going and sometimes three. I'll ask for a table to change to the best game and I'm never shy about a seat change button. Most people don't even understand why you're changing, they just think that you think you have an unlucky seat.If the 2-5 games are ridiculous bad then I'd look up to the 5-10 game. However this little strategy has not worked out in my favor in the past :club:
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Exactly, not a terribly helpful response from our Moderator - I'd almost just rather he come right out and call me retarded. Also, I believe Zach is primarily (although not exclusively) an on-line player. While the on-line prespective is interesting and the "pure" view of seat selection WITH player stats is interesting. In Live play it is far more difficult to switch seats/tables. Your action is much more explicit. You have to make a formal request and the selection of available seats is FAR more limited. So the decision isn't just: "Its very easy..." And even in the on-line world this is sort of a condescending answer without much detail. Anybody actually THINKING about - or better yet able to communicate the thought process of - seat selection and changing rather than just leaving when you "don't have an edge" or changing seats to "increase your edge"?
Good point. If you waited 30 minutes for a seat you don't want to just stand up because someone's annoying you. But overall, and this probably should apply to everyone, I leave when I'm tilting, and I have a very broad definition of this. I don't "tilt" from bad beats live because they simply cannot happen in sufficient volume (compare this to online play, where I can bust out of 6 SNGs in ~3 minutes). Live, I'll calm down before I have the opportunity to really blow up - there's too much time between hands. When I tilt it's because nothing's going my way. I'll have played for 2 and a half hours and my stack's slowly dwindled. The one time I got QQ I made it $60 to go and still had eighteen callers see a flop of AK6. I don't have much experience live so I get very frustrated and bored easily. I have a lot of trouble folding garbage after garbage. I mean, if I drove hours to get to Foxwoods I don't want to just sit out while paying a stupid time rake. Slowly my blood pressure starts rising. I rebuy and with my monster stack of 100 BBs I've obviously got the implied odds to call a raise from OOP with 5-9sooted. So if this happens I'll rack up, take a half hour off or so, and look for a laptop so I can debate starting a thread here titled, "Should I have called this? AK 1/2 nl"And, of course, if the table's too strong I'll get up and leave. But as tskillz says, that hardly ever happens live, especially not at my limits ($1/2 nl). Usually I end up sitting with the Worst Players on Earth.
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(this turned into me randomly addressing all the comments in this thread, so try to stay with me)Maybe I missed something. Poker is poker. It doesn't matter if it's online or live. I understand there are problems with moving seats in ALL games, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt it.As tskillz said, if you drove out there to play, but the game is tough, and you don't think you have an edge, but you play anyways, you're doing nothing but gambling. You aren't making a smart poker decision. A professional player would never sit in a game that he felt he didn't have an edge in, be it live, online, whatever, aside from some circumstance where he's playing well below his bankroll in a tough game, purposely to gain experience. That can definitely be defended.But on a day to day, session to session basis, there's literally nothing more to it than saying play when you feel you have an edge.If you are a recreational player, wtf do I care, gamble away with the rest of them. If you goal in this game is to make money, and support yourself, like mine is, and probably every professional poker player, you'll be smart enough to leave a bad situation.Of course, as mentioned above, having the discipline to act on knowing that you're in a -EV spot is clearly mandatory. It's part of being a succesful poker player. If you don't have any discipline, you won't make as much money as you should. Period.If you get annoyed when people are raising lots of hands is silly too. Poker players need to learn to adapt to all sorts of players. Certainly, if he's semi-competent, and you think he's better than you, you can do your best to stay out of pots with him unless you know you've got an edge with your starting hand selection, or, if you're not content, or too stubborn to adapt and change your style to what best suits the table, then rack up your chips and get on another table, or go home.It REALLY is no more complicated than the simple statement "play when you have an edge, leave when you don't". If you can't be bothered to live by that, you simply aren't maximizing your potential profits. You're nothing more than a gambler.Being a serious poker player is about a lot more than just playing poker. Game selection, discipline, the ability to recognize when you're not playing your best, or when game conditions don't suit your style, being able to adapt, etc are all MANDATORY skills that a serious poker player must learn. It's not just about playing a card game. It's about putting yourself in the best possible position to win the most money.And finally, if we're not going to follow the "leave when you no longer have an edge" motto, then you might as well just go grab a seat in the pit and play house games.

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Stay when +ev leave when -ev post
Pretty solid post. It obviously makes sense and is well thought out etc.I guess my main counterargument to this is that it's extremely difficult to know whether or not you have an edge in a live setting. There are two players that give you trouble but they are in the 6 and 8 seat and you are in the 2 seat. Is this game bad? Who the hell knows, you sit down and you play. Maybe the other people are donating so much that it's the best table in the joint. It's not as simple as "Do I have an edge?" simply because we can't compute that without thousands of hands with these same players. I think it's more about mindset and being able to adapt to different styles, which Zach briefly went over.As for mindset - are you willing to play your heart out and try your hardest with this aggro guy going at your or do you want to just sit there relaxed and take money from loose passive players? If you can't accept that you're going to get reraised a lot and that life is going to be tough then you need to get up. When you start playing at someone because of ego it's never optimal, even if you do come out ahead. It's stupid and it hurts a lot of players.Adapting to different players. This is different than mindset. A lot of players aren't capable of adapting to different players and a lot of other players are capable but don't have the mindset necessary to do it. Both are huge problems. The cheapest way to learn to adapt to different players is watching a bunch of CR videos, IMO. Other than that you need to try different styles and play a lot of hands. Then you'll know what you struggle with and what you struggle against. Once you're able to adapt to different players and have the mindset you should be fine with your table and just try and find the ones that favor your playing style most.This doesn't definitively address the "Am I +EV" question. But, in my mind it's pretty easy to approximiate your skill level compared to the stakes at your casino. Soon you can say "I can beat $XXX max at XXX casino" pretty confidently. Once you know you can beat the level, it's all on your own mind whether or not you're willing to play solid enough to beat the table setup you have.
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Yeah, well, in practice, of course we're never going to know exactly what our edge is.In general though, it's really all about being honest with yourself, and your play.In reality, there really only needs to be a few real live ones at a table to make it a +EV situation for most players. I like to think I'm the best player at the table, at all times, but it's certainly not always the case. When I know I'm against someone who has a comparable skill level, the fact of the matter is that your edge will either be tiny vs them, or non-existant. Now, I always say that we shouldn't pass up an edge in a cash game, and that's true, but it doesn't mean you need to attack the strong players in the game, when there are weaker spots to target.One of the biggest thing that bothers me when I played 6 max was that there'd be a table with me, 2 or 3 regulars (decent taggy, laggy players, talking LHE here), and 2 or 3 poor players. So I'll be focusing on putting myself in situations where I can win the most money from the weaker players. I like to think I'm a smart player. Most of the other regulars on AP are all braindead morons, imo, who just learned how to play poker. They go out of their way to 3-bet other strong aggro players "to keep them in line" or whatever the **** they use to justify it. It's simply a retarded thing to do. Focussing all of your energy on the stronger players at the table is just not the best way to make money, and like you said, when ego gets in the way, it's never optimal. That's a key here.In reality, 99% of the live games at the stakes we all play will be soft enough that pretty well any player who takes the time to study the game will have an edge. It's entirely possible that one live one at a 9 or 10 man game can make it a good game, it all depends on how live he is, and how mediocre or good the rest of the table is.My point is basically this, most of the time, we aren't going to find ourselves in a spot where we really need to get up from the game, simply due to the table makeup, but it's very important to be honest with yourself in all cases. If one of the other decent players is making moves on you, and you don't know how to respond to that, you really do need to try to find a better seat if he's on your left. If he's on your right, simply tighten up your range against him, so you have stronger hands to make up for him "outplaying" you, in addition to the other adjustments one would make (rebluffing, calling down ligher, etc [smartly, NOT out of ego purposes]). In reality, it's not a big deal, especially in an NL game, if one player at the table runs you over, unless you're doing something like putting in a ton of money, vs someone who's goal it is to bluff you, or whatever, on a rebluff. I mean, it's just about being smart and adjusting to the way others are playing. It's certainly not a bad idea to just stay out of his way, and of course, we have a better chance of doing that when we have position on a player, so don't be afraid to ask for the seat change button.Meanwhile, on the topic of seat changes in a live environment. As someone said, 95% of the players don't have a clue why you do that, but if someone asks, there's a million things you can say that will suffice to them. Stuff like, you're having a hard time seeing the flop from the end of the table, or you wanted a better view of the game on the tv, or you don't like the tard you were sitting beside because he smells like BO or smoking, or whatever.In summary, it's all about being honest with yourself. Sometimes a table just doesn't suit your style of play. Sometimes we can't adjust, it's not easy to do, in all situations. Sometimes we're tilting or not playing our A game. Sometimes we have an aggressive player trying to take stabs at us personally, and we don't know how to deal with it, or we're not in position to deal with it effectively. If we're honest with ourselves, we can assess the likelihood that we've got an edge in the current conditions and proceed from there. If we think we might be looking at a bad situation, we need to do something to make it better. Switch tables, switch seats, or just leave the game. We need to find the optimal conditions, as serious poker players. We are in this game to win money, and the most money we can win. If you're just there to gamble, that's another story, but for a serious poker player, this is very very important to our rate of success. And finally, even online, you'll never know for sure if you're +EV or -EV in a game. You can make assumptions based on the players in the game, and that's it. Gotta be honest with that, and go with your gut, etc.

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I've posted this story before, so sorry for the repeat to those who already read it.There's a local pro here in Indianapolis who is extremely good at reading people. He does very well at 2/5 and 5/10. He's one of the best players I know.He once drove the 2 hours to Caesar's Indiana, checked out the line-up of players, turned around and drove back. A recreational player would never, ever do this. This is why he doesn't need a job.

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I've posted this story before, so sorry for the repeat to those who already read it.There's a local pro here in Indianapolis who is extremely good at reading people. He does very well at 2/5 and 5/10. He's one of the best players I know.He once drove the 2 hours to Caesar's Indiana, checked out the line-up of players, turned around and drove back. A recreational player would never, ever do this. This is why he doesn't need a job.
If I did that, I'd rather sit in a 1/2 game and just ahve some fun where I KNOW I'd have an edge than drive back. Seems to be less of a waste of time that way.In all honesty, I've gotten up from a game very few times. Part of it is a little bit of ego but most of it is a drive to become better. I know that when I'm sitting in a relatively tough 5/10 game, my edge may be small or non-existant, but I'm never really a real underdog, so I sit and I gut it out and I become better by facing difficult situations. I stay because I feel that I can win in the game, but that it will be difficult. It's kind of an investment in my game.Overall though, there are many occasions where I've chosen to play 5/10 instead of 10/20 or 2/5 instead of 5/10 becuase the lineup at the higher game wans't something I wanted to deal with.
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