Using Poker Room Stats To Your Advantage

Any good (almost certainly all) poker rooms will always give you some basic stats when you are in the main lobby.

Some rooms have more stats than you could ever digest but all of them will feature 2 key stats:

Flop Seen Percentage

This will give you an idea of how often the flop is seen by the players. The higher this stat then the more loose the players are, on average.

This will mean that there are a lot of players who don’t mind throwing their chips in to see if their hand will improve on the flop. As you and I know, this is a dumb strategy employed by many fish who just don’t like to fold if their hand is not any good (or lack confidence to force others to fold).

Take advantage of this but also be prepared to find a lot of “calling stations” too – see The Different Types Of Poker Players And Why You Need To Know Them.

Average Pot Size

The average pot size stat is very good for a number of reasons. You should generally aim to find a table that has at least a medium average pot size.

If the pot size is small then it means that you have a lot of tight players who aren’t willing to play aggressive and go in with the chips. Actually, these types of tables are good for “stealing the blinds” (see Stealing The Blinds – Effective Blind Stealing In Texas Holdem) but in general, don’t expect to walk away rich.

Far better are the tables where the average pot size is pretty high. This means that you have a lot of loose players. Watch out though because it can also mean that there are some very good players here too. I have been at tables where the average pot size was very big and you basically had one half of the table who were sharks and the other half were a rotating line of fish ready to part with all their cash. Beware the sharks and don’t become a fish yourself!