4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: St. Louis
Posts: 1,921
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As usual, good thread aokrongly.
In my experience, a high % OF PLAYERS SEEING THE FLOP typically indicates that the table has several bad players that are playing too many hands. AVERAGE POT SIZE is a bit trickier. On many sites they average the pot size over the past 10 hands. Ten hands isn't exactly a large sample size. One monster pot or a couple of unusually large ones will skew the number on the high side. Conversely, a short run of cold cards on an otherwise juicy table may deceive someone looking solely at the table stats from the lobby. I still use average pot size as an indicator, but I don't give it near as much weight as % PLAYERS SEEING THE FLOP. I'm basing my observations on $100NL 6-max on PokerStars.
Luckily PokerStars lets you sort the tables by various criteria. I click "Hide Full Tables" and set my first setting to "Limit" so I have $100NL at the top. My second is "Players" so I can quickly find which tables only need one more player. My third search criteria is "Players/Flop."
I initially choose the tables with the highest Players/Flop % and use the average pot size secondarily. I tend to choose the higher pot sizes, but I don't ignore smaller ones. At $100NL 6-max on Stars, a small pot size sometimes means weak players (ie. not much aggression, lots of limping/folding). This is the type of table I want to be at because they are the easiest to run over. You just continually push them into making bad decisions. The average pot size when you initially sit down doesn't matter much on a table like this because the action is quickly going to be flowing through you. They're going to have to put money into the pot if they want to play. I have never paid attention, but if you look at an average table with weak players and a low average pot size before and after a good LAggy player sits down, I'm willing to bet it increases once they arrive.
Something I think you're leaving out is the average stack size. I don't know any site that lists it, but you can quickly tell by looking at the table yourself. I will pass on a table with a couple of big stacks because it usually indicates other LAggy players and instead choose ones with several people with below the max. buy-in. These are typically weaker players. Obviously you're going to have them covered and they can't match your money when you're AI, but I still find I make much more money of these people than I do occassionally stacking a person with a stack that matches mine.
Of course all of this is just initial selection. There is no substitute for actually sitting at a table and getting a feel for it's texture. I'll often switch tables several times at the beginning of a session and in the middle of it until I settle into some that suit my tastes.
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