How to select poker tables without software?

After Black Friday, the level of ecology in poker is on the rise. The term "Ecology" hides the desire of poker rooms to make weak players the foundation of the ecosystem, without which the companies will not be able to exist properly. In recent years, the level of play of regulars has increased significantly. Developers of poker software have not been left behind, making it more perfect and convenient. As a result, the pros are taking away the stacks of amateurs even faster.

The bottom line:

• Interest in poker drops as many important countries have become inaccessible. At best, rooms are opening national reservations like iPoker.it or PokerStars US.
• The level of software has increased significantly.
• The skill of professional players is slowly but surely increasing.
• The fishes have also increased a little bit, but not so much that we can seriously take it into account.

At the output we get kilometer-long queues: often 10+ people gather under one average amateur. PokerStars is particularly frustrating, where instead of playing you spend time looking for suitable opponents. The situation annoys not only regulars, imagine the feelings of a recreational player: he made a deposit and wants to get emotions from bluffs, herocalls and winnings. But in reality, he is surrounded by professional players and zeroed in 15-20 hands. The desire to make a deposit again such experience will not cause.

If all opponents at the table are sharks, then only the poker room benefits from it

Rooms deliberately reduces the role of auxiliary programs to find weak players. The changes to the available software at Pokerstars that we announced and that will take effect on March 4, 2019 are some of the most tangible in the history of online poker. Similar changes have happened or will happen elsewhere. Rooms will tighten the screws even more and deprive players of even a modicum of opportunity to find weak opponents. So let's prepare in advance and repeat the basic elements of manual select.

How to find a weak player without a tracker and statistics?

There are several proven ways to identify recreational player. The loudest signs of an opponent's weakness are: stack size, country of residence, tags, notes and number of tables played simultaneously. Let's discuss each sign in more detail.

1. Stack size. The cornerstone method of classifying opponents. Regulars know that the bigger the stack, the higher the mathematical expectation, so they always play with 100 BB and automatic buy-in. A player with a smaller stack or without auto-buy will almost always be a fish. There are rare exceptions in the form of opponents who play with autodouble up to 98 BB or another favorite number, but such originality is not in favor of such an opponent. It is important not to classify professional SSS- and MSS-players as weak players. The first almost disappeared, because the opportunity to sit at the table with 20 big blinds removed in all major rooms.

2. Country. Representatives of some countries play poker weaker than other nationalities. Perhaps it is the mentality of the selected countries, but more often we see a simple correlation - a high standard of living entails a lighter attitude to losing money. And vice versa. At the tables we meet both flooded citizens of the Republic of Belarus and profitable Canadians, but the general trend still allows using the country of the player as a reliable clue. Another thing is that the rooms refuse to display the states at the poker table.

3. Tags and notes on players. A secondary method of manually tracking players. Here it all depends on our actions and observations. The more closely we follow what is happening at the table, the more accurately we can see the "fishy" tendencies of our opponents. We recommend not just marking recreational players in green and regulars in red, but also grouping them: calling-station, loose-aggressive, maniac, rock, tight-aggressive. Over time, the records will pay for themselves many times over and pump your observation. In the clients of some rooms there is an option "add a player to friends", which will allow you to track our whale.

Strong players do not just tag amateurs, but also mark specific countenances to use in the future

4. Number of tables played. Amateurs play 1-2 tables, professionals actively multi-table. Alternatively, an opponent is hardly a professional player when he plays: 1 cash table, 1 MTT table, 1 Sit&Go HU table and 1 Omaha high-low table at the same time.

We will not give exact figures for the number of hands played per hour or pots sizes, as it is difficult to come up with specific digits here. Remember that you should sit in position on the recreational player, not the other way around. If the recreational player sits in a position on you, you will get less profit than headaches. The source of problems will be both the actions of the fish and the fight of the regulars for his money. The latter will try to play a lot of banks against a weak opponent to realize their advantage in skill.

Ways of selecting with auxiliary programs

PokerStars banned TableScan Turbo back in 2019. A little earlier, PS covered up the auto-seating software: Magic Seat, Hiroku autoseating script, Need4Seat and SeatMojo. PokerStars didn't stop there and the next step in the fight for poker ecology was to restrict multi-tabling. Some rooms have surpassed the former industry leader and made invisible nicknames of clients at the table in the lobby. An iPoker Network player can only find out who they are playing with after the first hand at the table. Before that, all opponents are displayed as "Player 1", "Player 2" and so on.

A few years ago, pessimists predicted a complete ban on poker trackers. However, no one, except partypoker, followed this path.

The greatest zeal was shown by the PaiWangLuo network, where anonymous play is the default. Stack sizes and notes on players are almost the only reliable selection criteria in modern online poker.

Conclusion

Poker room management is unlikely to renegotiate the terms and conditions and allow select. Now it is easier to choose a radical solution and go fishy mobile application, than to suffer from the lack of select in the classic room. A new poker boom is not to be expected. The only reliable way to continue earning money with poker is to constantly work on yourself. Emphasize quality over quantity and follow basic guidelines for finding suitable opponents.

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