Table Selection Tips for Online Cash Games
When you sit down to play cash game online, you are going to sit in some very difficult games here and there. Playing online cash games has become one of the hardest areas of online poker to beat in the past couple of years. These games in fact are so hard that tons of players have gone broke by continuing to play in them. Online cash games have evolved over the past 5-10 years and are now the most competitive poker games online. If you are just starting off and had success 3-4 years ago at the 5/10 no limit games, you might not even be able to beat the .10/.25 cent games. That is how much the games have changed over the past few years and it has changed into more of a mathematical game as opposed to a live poker game that is being played online. Players use things like HUD’s and other tools to multi-table and not have to guess what tables are playing aggressive or passive. This HUD will allow you to see exactly how a player is going about the game. Getting one of these and understanding how it works is essential to have success in online cash games these days. If you don’t have one you should go out and purchase one and understand how it works because in the long run it will help you more times than it will hurt you. What it does is tell you the pre-flop aggression of players and three betting frequency along with other attributes that are essential to have success in cash games. If you are multi-tabling you will not know these things otherwise.
When you look to sit down in a cash game you have to find the juicy games. This means you have to find games that will be profitable for you to play in. There are tons of regular players out there today that only make a small amount of money playing and get most of their money from things like rake back and solid VIP programs that poker sites offer. The games to sit in are with players who are losing players in the long run and also loose aggressive players. If you sit with passive players, you may win a few pots before the flop by raising and taking the blinds, but eventually you may get stuck playing a big pot without having a big hand. This is the opposite of what you want. You want big pots with big hands against lesser opponents who are prone to call their stack off light. Finding these games is tough to do, but as you become a regular player on a poker site you shouldn’t have much trouble with it. It is more so something you will learn to do throughout a month of playing as opposed to something you figure out instantly. The more you play the more you know about what players are capable of doing, and you will also find standard spots to get your money in the pot.
Finding the fish or bad players is easy these days because of how much technology and the internet has advanced over the previous years. There are databases on tracking sites out there today that will tell you how much profit players have made and who is winning or losing on any given day. You can look on tracking sites to see who is on a downswing and who is on an upswing. The players you want to play are the ones on uncontrollable downswings. These players are on a constant tilt and are more prone to stack off light and get all their money in to pots without big hands. If you search the tracking websites you will find these players and in return you can sit in these cash games. If you find a number of players who are on downswings sitting in one game you should play this game mainly because the dead money is worth it. The dead money in online cash games is always going to be there because most poker players are stubborn and will not move down in limits when they are losing. Most players will continue down the path of a game because they feel luck will even out in the end, but they don’t realize that luck is not why they are losing. Luck is a part of the game, but it is by no means all of the game. Categorizing players into simple things such as bad or good will help you when selecting online cash games. Even though that is an elementary way to look at it, this is still something you should do before every session. If you are sitting in a 6 handed cash game with all good players you will not make money in the long run of poker and you should leave the table. It is the littlest of things that will make losing players into winning players and winning players into losing players. Ego sometimes plays a large role into whether players will be successful in the long run, and you should always keep it in check when playing cash games. If you don’t it could lead to a horrible run for you and cost you a bunch of money.