Fish Finder

      The winner takes it all,
      The loser has to fall,
      It's simple and it's plain,
      Why should I complain?           Abba

  They say that the three most important things in poker are position, position and position. If that's true then the fourth thing must be game selection.  Most of the time when I play I remember the first three things, but I think I've forgotten about the importance of game selection in recent times.
   Ever since I started playing online games I've had a basic plan that dictated the types of games I played in. Live games are reasonably simple because there aren't many suitable ones available. So I just play in any live games that I can find. On the other hand online games are far more numerous, so I can pick and choose. During the main part of each year I've played in two online game types: my most successful game from the previous year, and a new game type that I haven't tried before. Then in the summer season I play in a third game type, usually something that I've played in before, in previous years. But my recent results have made me reconsider my 'game plan'.

   It's really my appallingly bad Sit'n'Go results that have led me to this point. I'm playing online Sit'n'Gos this year because they were my best game last year, and I played them last year for the same reason. But over the years my results in this game have been a bit of roller-coaster ride. I've played this game type mainly on 888poker and if I do well for a while I'll move up to a higher level, and if I do poorly I'll drop a level. I started out playing in $3 games and eventually moved up to the $8.80 level. Then I went into a bit of a decline and ended up back down at the lower levels. Then things got better again and I rose back up to $8.80 games again before this years' downturn, which has bought me back down to the $3 level again. Looking back at my recent results, I haven't had a positive result in any Sit'n'Go season since February 2013.
   Since dropping down to the lower levels on 888 I've discovered that the $3 games are often slow to fill up. So I've been playing a lot more in the Pokerstars $3.50 games, which are generally a bit tougher to play in. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm trying to play these games in accordance with the Poker School Online guidelines in a desperate attempt to stop the rot. So the plan is to keep playing this way until the end of November, and then to reconsider my options.

   Meanwhile, the other online game I've been playing in this year has been Texas Holdem cash games. I was employing game selection principles when I started out in this game type. I spent a month playing on Pokerstars, then a month on 888 to see which site had the easier games. 888 was the obvious choice so I've  been playing cash games on this site ever since. I started out pretty well but my results have dropped off a bit in the last couple of months. I'm still ahead overall, but a few bad sessions recently have made me start thinking about the nature of these games.
   888 is generally considered to be one of the easiest or 'fishiest' sites to play on, but after playing cash games on 888 for a while I'm not so sure that this is true. Most of the players that I've encountered so far have been pretty tight and it's unusual to see players limping in before the flop, or to see more than three players seeing the flop. It seems the days of finding tables full of loose, inexperienced poker players are in the past. This state of affairs concerned me so much that I went looking for a fishier poker site. After checking out some site comparisons I decided that Titan Poker, Bet365 and Party Poker were worth a look. Unfortunately, my fish-finder mission didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped (more on this later) and although I'm now registered with Bet365, I'm not holding out much hope of finding a loose online cash game.

  I've played in enough of these new game types over the years to know how important it is to start at low buy-in levels to minimise any losses. Having started at the 10c/20c level, my patchy results have not led me to consider moving up a level, although I might consider playing two tables at this level if my results improve significantly. Meanwhile I'll keep plugging away until the end of November.
   The one game type that I'm really happy with at the moment is live tournaments. These are the games that have been keeping my poker bankroll balance moving forward. It's hardly surprising that these club tournaments are typically incredibly loose and passive. Pre-flop raising is pretty rare, pre-flop calling is standard practice and minimum betting into large pots goes on all the time. These are exactly the sorts of games that I've been looking for online, and I'm always on the look-out for similar games.
   The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I'm spreading myself too thin. It's all very well trying different poker variants, but this makes it harder to concentrate on optimal strategies, and harder to shift gears when changing from one game to another. I haven't had much success in playing new game types over the years and I'm beginning to think that doing this is only diverting my attention away from the profitable game types. So I've decided that my mission to try every possible poker variant is ultimately counterproductive. I think I'm much better off

concentrating on a single online game type, and it's probably best to do it over a reasonably extended time period, to smooth out the bumps.
   With all this in mind, I have a new poker plan. I'll keep playing in the usual way until the start of the summer season. Then I'll take a good long look at my game results and decide which game type I want to pursue. From there on I'll be concentrating on one game type and working on becoming the best possible player I can be in that particular version of poker. That's not to say that I wont be changing my preferred online game at some point, but I'm going to give one game a good long trial first. Being a profitable player is all about finding some sort of edge, and I'm determined to find one in my online games.