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Stud Poker Table Selection Strategy
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Stud Poker Table Selection Strategy
April 13th, 2010 by Nick
I wanted to discuss the importance of choosing the right Stud poker table at Pokerstars. This will be the first of a three part guide to Stud poker table selection at the top 3 poker rooms for Stud players; Pokerstars (Read Review), Full Tilt Poker (Read Review) and Absolute Poker (Read Review).
Table Information Available At Pokerstars.com
- Table: This column provides the name of the table. At Pokerstars there are two types of tables for the 3 Stud poker games: normal and fast. The normal speed Stud poker tables give players 15 seconds to decide to fold/bet/call/raise. At the fast Stud tables you will only have 10 seconds. You have a 30 timebank you can use when you are facing a tough decision though. If the tabke name has a red spade (the Pokerstars logo) next to it that means that one of the professional players from Team Pokerstars is playing at the table.
- Stakes: For the Stud games at Pokerstars the stakes listed are the small bet and large bet. The ante at Stars is 10% of the small bet. For example, a $1/2 table would have an ante of $.10.
- Limit: Pokerstars.com only offers fixed limit tables for each of the 3 Stud poker games.
- Players: This indicates the number of players sitting at the table, including players that are sitting out.
- Wait: How many players are waiting to play at a particular table.
- Average Pot: The average pot column is an important statistic to look at when choosing a table. I believe they base this number off of the last 100 hands.
- Plrs/4th: This is the most important factor in table selection. It indicates the number of players who have called the initial round of betting and stayed in the pot until 4th street. If a table with 8 active players has a 50% plrs/4th percentage that would mean 4 players will at least stay in the hand until 4th street each hand, on average. I will go into the detailed strategical applications for this statistic below.
- H/hr: This column indicates the number of hands played per hour. The Stud poker games tend to be relatively slow when compared to Hold’em.
Stud Poker Table Selection Strategy
For Stud poker, the most important factor is plrs/4th but you must take the number of players at the table into consideration as well when factoring this into your table selection strategy. If a table only has two or three players the range of playable hands drastically increased. I just took a screenshot of the $2/4, Seven Card Stud tables. Each of the tables has 8 players so that won’t be a factor. Below I will interpret what the different numbers mean from a statistical point of view. I will list the best table to play at out of the 5 tables along with the worst, as well as provide some information on how I made these determinations.
- Table 1 (Adelheid VII) - Easy Money Here! - The average pot ($33) for this table is twice the size of the 4 other tables. The Plrs/4th percentage (37%) is also much higher than the other tables. This table has the softest competition out of the 5 tables. In other words, this table has the worst 7 Card Stud players, making it the easiest table to win money at for skilled players. The high Plrs/4th percentage by itself indicates that the players are playing mediocre hands on a regular basis. When you add in the high average pot it means that not only are these players bad, they are playing very aggressively with weak hands. This combination is perfect for a tight aggressive (TAG) Stud strategy. Tight means that you are only playing the very best starting hands. I’m tempted to stop writing and add myself to the wait list lol. The only shortcoming this table has is the hands/hour (53).
- Table 2 (Libitina VII) – Toughest Competition! – This table has a 19% plrs/4th percenage, making it the hardest table to win money at.
As you can see table selection for 7 Card Stud players is very important. The differences between table 1 and table 2 are very great. If you sat at table 2 you will likely be grinding it out with seasoned Stud players that know what they are doing. It would require quite a bit of luck to win a worthwhile amount of money at this table. If you played at table 1 (assuming you are a seasoned Stud player), you will likely win a lot of money in the long term. These two tables are as different from each other as a scratch off ticket that pays 75% of the time (table 1) compared to 25% of the time (table 2).
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April 14th, 2010 at 9:51 am
I’ve never really considered any of these factors. I usually just sit at whichever table has an open seat. I play at the higher stakes Stud tables so my options are limited, even at Stars. I’ll take more time in choosing a table from now on though and see how that works.