Game selection

Among the multitude of off-table edges, game selection is one of the most basic advantages. Most people will confuse game selection with table selection. Mind you: it’s not the same thing.

Table selection comes right after you’ve selected the game you want to play in, and it’s about finding the table that has the right mix of players at it, to best facilitate your strategy approach.

In regards to game selection: you can choose to play Holdem, Omaha, Stud or some other variant. The type of players you’ll go up against, will be largely dependant on the poker variant you’ll play.

Texas Holdem is by far the most popular variant. Because of that, it attracts the most fish too. Your chances of playing against fish are increase tenfold if you opt for Holdem. Omaha, is less popular, but – provided you’re lucky – you’ll run into fish there too.

What you need to know however, is that the edge Texas Holdem gives a good player over fish (and especially schooling fish) is quite minimal. There’s a huge short-term variance in this game, and the luck factor will be prevalent. This’ll make it awfully frustrating to beat fish, because – in layman terms – they’ll outdraw you on stupid calls.

In Omaha, a fish doesn’t really stand a chance against a reasonable player. Omaha is a game of nuts and huge edges. Schooling won’t be an issue either. If you know you’ll play against fish, by all means do choose Omaha. Playing against good players in Omaha is a living nightmare though. If you have to play against good players, choose Texas Holdem.

A game’s profitability also depends on other factors as well. Let’s suppose you stick to Texas Holdem. Online, rake is taken as a fixed percentage of every pot. Offline, however, time-collection is the preferred method. That means offline games will usually be looser than online ones, albeit they’ll be slower as well.