Monetary Value of Poker Buddy Lists

When I first started playing poker for a living, I played single-table tournaments on PartyPoker for most of my income. There are not a lot of table selection tools required when your $30 sit and go fills up in 15 seconds and you have to get in there and get registered. With thousands of people playing those tournaments, I didn't see the same people frequently anyway, especially back in those days when grinders only played four tables at a time. Table selection just wasn’t something I was concerned with.

When I switched to cash games a year or two into my poker career, I did a little research into how much a fishy table might be worth as compared to a typical table and a strong table. That was many hard drives ago, so I can't reproduce the research exactly for you, but I discovered that the $5/$10 Fixed Limit Hold’em games that I was playing broke down like this:

At a fishy table, I was making 3.2 big bets per 100 hands, or about $20 per table hour.

At a typical table, I could expect to make my usual win rate of 1.9 big bets per 100 hands, or about $11.50 per table hour.

At a table with mostly solid players, I would usually make around 1 big bet per 100 hands, or about $6 per table hour.

I also did a little quick math. If the average player was losing half a big bet per 100 hands and I could replace that player with a fish who was losing four big bets per 100 hands, it meant an extra 3.5 big bets per 100 hands were available to win. If there were eight other players at the table, then the nine of us would each make an extra 0.39 big bets per 100 hands if we divided up the money evenly. Since some of the other players were also fish and wouldn't win any money from this player, I figured to make quite a bit more than my fair share and that fish was probably worth more than half a big bet every 100 hands, or an extra $3 per hour. Most people would kill for a $3 per hour raise and all I had to do was start making it a point to find fish and sit with them at their table.

This was a remarkable difference. I know it's not groundbreaking news that a weak table is worth more money than a table full of sharks, but I was surprised to find that the tables varied as much as they did in quality, which meant a huge difference in my hourly win rate. Back then, all I could do was keep a list of fish and look for them at the tables. Also, I’d stay away from players that I knew were sharks. Things have gotten a lot more sophisticated when it comes to finding fish-filled tables.

Whether you call it a fish finder, a fish list, a poker buddy list, or something else, the programs we have at our disposal now are powerful. When PlayerGPS is back online and working smoothly, it will be an excellent resource. Until it’s back, I'm using Smart Buddy, which allows you to add an infinite number of players, separate them into groups, and then run it in the background without eating up a ton of computer resources. So far, Smart Buddy has made me quite happy and my fish list is growing quickly.

If you play lots of tables, then you'll want to look at a different set of table selection tools. If you use PokerTracker or Holdem Manager, then there are table selection tools built into your tracking software that may be the best choice for you. There's also SpadeEye, Sixth Sense, Table Shark, and a number of other programs in our table selection category here at PokerSoftware.com. Most of them work the same way and do a fine job, but try a few of them out and see which one suits you.

A table selection tool differs from a fish finder because it doesn't look for specific players, but instead looks for tables that are profitable. With most of them, you can set up the software to look for tables that fall within certain parameters. Some six-max Fixed Limit Hold’em players will hunt for tables with the lowest VPIP number because they like to run over the table with a very loose and aggressive style, while others will look for tables with a low aggression factor or one or two very loose players.

For full ring games, especially where there is a huge player pool like $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em, a general table selection tool is probably best because one fish does not improve your win rate as much as finding a generally weak table does. In the $20/$40 Razz games that I play on Full Tilt Poker, I much prefer a fish finder because getting an alert that my favorite fish has just logged on is worth much more than hearing about a weak table. There is usually only one table running anyway and if one of my favorite fish is playing, then the table is definitely good.

If you aren't taking of advantage of a table selection tool and/or a fish finder, don't wait any longer; you're throwing money away. They aren't expensive, they almost all have a free trail, and they pay for themselves very quickly. If you're a winning player, make sure to save the receipt for that table selection tool; it's a deductible business expense!