Early orbits

You've found a table you like and taken your seat. All your opponents are unknowns. What do you do in early orbits to:

a) Establish your table image.
b) Assess the other players.

I'm most interested in knowing if there's anything you do differently in early orbits as compared to later orbits, but the subject is wide open.

Discuss.

I tend to play tighter in the first 2-3 orbits (full ring) to see who's betting or slow playing and such. I also look to see what size of raises get respect and what are just pot builders.

Yea I don't invest too much if I can help it, until my stats start to give me a clue whether to stay there or not. Sometimes I will go thru 8 or nine tables before I'm settled at 4. Which sucks on AP becasue their software sucks and updates slower than pony express.

How can you know if you like a table or not if everybody is unknown? At the tables I play at, I typically will find 2 other regs and the rest "unknowns" but I will usually have stats on most of them. Against the regs, I will play the same game I usually do. Against the unknowns with fishy stats, I play like I would against a fish in any situation, I dont worry a ton about image there. The only adjustments I really make are against players with decent TAG looking stats that I havent played with before. Against these guys Im not going to be 3betting light or making moves in general until I have established an image of not being a donk. Other than that though, I basically play the same game.

this will sound very bad, but it works.

i sit like a rock, playing only premiums and only going past the flop when i am very certain i am good (i look really weak-tight), until PT gets to 15-20 hands per table, when multi-tabling. i trust all player actions until PT opens, and then use that to get some general reads of tendencies, but also use it for table selection and to see exactly which seat i have at the table. where are the lags, tags, rocks, etc?

if i like the table, i start opening up my game to normal range. if not, i leave.

some would say i trust PT way too much. i dont play live, so i dont know what i would do in an actual casino.

oh, and i dont play over 100 NL. so, that may change your perceptions of my comments.

but i stress, this works...for me. have played over a year and a half from 10 NL to 100 NL, full rings and SH, limit from .10/.20 to 2/4 both full and SH. and have not shown a negative win rate at any level w/ at least a 20k sample size. some i do better with and some i dont do as well, but i havent lost over any decent sample.