While your overall skill level is obviously important when it comes to poker profits, table selection is just as important in cash games. After all, if you’re playing on a table full of solid regulars, it’s extremely tough to make any money.

As most people know, basic table selection calls for looking at the flopped-viewed percentage; generally speaking, the higher the flopped-viewed percentage, the more loose fish seeing the flop. However, just about everybody knows this, so it’s important to consider a couple of other factors too.

Assuming you don’t have a heads-up display, it will probably take around 40-50 hands to assess how good the table is you choose. You can play ABC poker while profiling your competition so as not to lose any major money. While you’re assessing opponents, some general signs of fish/novice players include those who open-limp, and players who buy into a cash game with less than the allowed 100 big blinds.

Open-limping is rarely a good play because it not only shows weakness in one’s hand, but you’re likely to get raised by a skilled player later in the hand. In regards to buying into games with less than 100bb, this is usually a mistake because you can’t maximize your advantage with great hands (in No-Limit). This being said, there are players who purposely play short-stacked in cash games to create a certain table image; however, the average short-stacker isn’t a good player.

One final point worth mentioning here is that if you can’t spot at least one poor player on the table after playing 40-50 hands, it’s a smart idea to move on to another table. It also helps if you play the same stakes at the same time of day so you get a good feeling for the regulars – this makes separating regs from fish much easier.

One concept that’s rarely discussed with regards to poker strategy is how you should start a multi-tabling session. The biggest dilemma most players have here is whether to open all of their poker tables right away, or slowly ease their way in by opening one table at a time.

This all comes down to preference because some players need to “warm-up” at the beginning of a session, while others feel comfortable opening the typical number of tables they play right away. For example, if you normally play 6 poker tables at once, you can open all six as long as it doesn’t affect your decision making.

Of course, there’s nothing forcing you to open the maximum amount right away, and it’s not going to kill your profits if you don’t have all six tables open.

Furthermore, you don’t have to play the max number of tables when you’re having trouble concentrating during a lengthy session. After all, not everybody can maintain their maximum focus throughout the whole multi-tabling session. Some days you just won’t have it, and you might do a lot better by dropping the amount of tables you play by two or three.

Before you jump into a multi-tabling session, it’s also helpful to get into a routine such as looking over hand histories or poker strategy articles. Doing so can put you in the right mind frame to play poker and have a successful session. This is especially the case with hand histories since you can pick up some tips on where you went wrong during certain hands, and improve on them in the upcoming session.

After you’ve been playing poker at the same stakes for a while, defining a general playable range of hands becomes much easier. Sure this range will change depending upon what’s happening at your specific table, but you’ll at least have a good idea about what hands are okay to play from each position.

Doing this same thing in heads-up poker can be a little trickier if you’re not totally experienced in HU play. For one thing, your opponent’s average holdings will be much weaker, so you need to be more aggressive with marginal hands. In addition to this, you can’t just sit around waiting for excellent hands to come because you’re either paying the small or big blind every hand. That said, let’s address the challenges heads-up players face by looking at some general HU cash game and tournament advice.

Heads-up Tournament Play

If you’re heads-up with another player in a MTT or SNG, chances are that the blinds are pretty significant at this point. So the first thing you need to consider is how you and your opponent’s chip stacks measure up to the blinds. For example, if you and your opponent each had 200,000 chips and the blinds are at 10,000/20,000, you’d both have 10 big blinds. Now this doesn’t give you a lot of room to work with, so you’re going to need to shove as well as call shoves with marginal hands.

A decent guideline to consider in this situation is to shove with Ax, Kx, Q4+, J9+, T9+, 98+ and 22+. As for calling shoves, you should look to do so with Ax, Kx, Q6+, JT+ and 22+. If you’ve got far more big blinds than what we discussed before, you can afford to be a little more conservative in your range of playable hands. Furthermore, you won’t have to do as much shoving since the blinds aren’t as critical.

Heads-up Cash Game Play

Heads-up cash games are a lot more relaxed when it comes to how aggressive you need to play. After all, if your stack drops considerably, you can always rebuy and stay in the game. This being the case, there won’t be nearly as much shoving in HU cash games.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to define any guideline for how you should play HU cash because this all depends on your opponent. For instance, if you’re playing against an extremely loose-aggressive player, you’d want to open both the range of hands you raise with as well as the range you’d be willing to call with.

A guideline for raising hands against a maniac cash game player include A4+, K6+, Q7+, J8+, 97+, 87+ and 22+. Hands you could call raises with include A6+, K8+, Q9+, J9+, T8+, 98+ and 22+. But again, this is just general advice, and the range of playable cash game hands will all depend on what you’ve seen from your opponent.