One of the most difficult challenges when playing online poker, especially tournaments, is finding empty tables. If you're a winning player your bottom line is directly linked to how quickly you can find empty tables where no one is playing. The quicker you find these "fishy" tables, the more opportunities you'll have to make money (in theory).
The worst tables to play are full ring games with nine or more players. Not only because there is more dead money (tight aggressive players), but also because you have to wait for the round to complete before changing seats/tables. This can be torture! So what's the answer? What options do you have as an online poker player to minimize waiting time and maximize your time on the computer playing poker? Below we will go over some of our best tips to help you find empty tables!
Best Rooms for Finding Empty Tables in Poker
It's simple really - there are more fish to catch in the smaller lakes. Now don't get me wrong the small lakes (poker sites) may not have the same resources as the big lake to keep the fish happy and healthy but that doesn't matter if all you want to do is catch a few for supper. You won't catch many by hanging around in the big lake with all the expert fishermen!
There are hundreds of poker rooms online. Most of them small, some of them large, and a very, very few mega-giant ones. As a general rule the smaller the site the easier it is to find empty tables and the worse (better for you) the competition will be. Players new to online poker often make the mistake of opening up a new account at PokerStars or Full Tilt instead of taking their bankroll bonus to a smaller site where they can crush the competition.
You don't need soft sites to beat - you're better than those, but these small sites are generally never reviewed well because the software is poor and the traffic is thin. Strike while the iron is hot before its drained completely. The traffic will always get better and sometimes you can even hop on the ground floor and help expedite the process (see: ).
video poker casinosEventually these small sites get bought out (or close down) and players scramble to move to the next "undiscovered" site. Don't get me wrong - PokerStars and FTP are great sites to be on from a security standpoint, player benefits perspective and overall professionalism. But if you're looking to build your roll and move up stakes fast, and having fun isn't at the top of your list, then play where the competition is weakest. Once you've beaten a site or stagnated, feel free to move up in site reputation. See our to play to help you decide which room works best for you.
Multi-Tabling = More Poker Tables to Find
Another aspect to consider about finding empty tables is the number of tables you're willing and able to play at once. If you're only playing one table at a time you have exactly one empty table to concentrate on at any given moment in time. If you can handle two tables then you have some chance of having an empty table pop up every once in awhile.
The more tables you play at a time the more chances you have to find empty tables with fishy players. Say on average you have a chance of finding an empty table every 10 minutes. If you're playing one table that's great, but if you're playing four tables that's four times as many chances to find fishy new players. There's a lot of truth to the saying "Time is Money." The more time you waste searching for empty tables on a single table, a group of three tables, or a full set of ten tables, the more money you're going to make by multitabling.
Before you quit your day job and put all your time into online poker, make sure you're ready for the challenge of multitabling efficiently. Four to ten tables is the ideal range for most winning poker players - check our full guide to . Before you quit your day job and put all your time into online poker, make sure you're ready for the challenge of multitabling efficiently. Four to ten tables is the ideal range for most winning poker players - check our full guide to .
Borgata Poker Open Schedule | Events & ResultsOne helpful tip is to use an external tool like . It allows you to take certain pre-set actions on other tables automatically under certain conditions (like betting). This way you don't have to constantly look at every table all the time. Of course using third party software to automatically act on tables while you're away is against the terms of service of every major online poker site and can get you banned. But clicking a button on your desktop to check all your tables minimum-raising while you quickly look at a hot table is a great way to make sure you never miss a bet.
Play Less Popular Poker Games and Variants
Most people play Texas Hold'em. If you want to find empty tables you have to play less popular games, especially ones with even fewer tight-aggressive players. You won't see as many Omaha or Stud tables as Hold'em tables but you still may have to hunt around to find some of the lesser variants like Five Card Draw, PLO5 or 2-7 Triple Draw. Check out our to help you decide which game might work best for you.
Even within Hold'em you can change things up to find softer spots. Mix up limit and no-limit. Mixed max and full ring. Slow games and turbo games. Fix-pot games like PLO Hi/Lo or 2-7 Triple Draw. Any changes you can make to get away from full tables of nitty regulars who play 24 tables at a time.
Unfortunately, spread doesn't have great options outside Hold'em. Their Omaha and Stud games aren't terribly populated and you may have to look around for the lesser variants (though see note above about ). is also a decent option for non-Hold'em action. offers Omaha and Stud but again, the biggest online poker sites mean more tough competition.
What Time of Day Do Poker Sites Have More Open Tables?
This will vary depending on where you live but in general think of online poker traffic in terms of local time zones. Most players living in North America play in the evening/night when it's reasonable playing hours back home. Use this to your advantage by logging on in the morning/afternoon when you normally would be sleeping.
You'll find far fewer players online which means far fewer regulars and far more fishy players just looking for a game. They might be struggling Americans trying to make a buck or Canadians watching hockey highlights but either way there will be more new players looking for action during the day and the existing players will be the regulars from South America, Europe and Asia. Generally speaking all three of the aforementioned time zones will have fewer players (and thus fewer regulars) than North American primetime.
Play When Major Live Tournament is On Breaks / Finishing Up
This ties in nicely with the previous point about time zones. If you pay attention to the live tournament circuit you can find extra soft spots on net poker sites whenever a major tournament goes on a break or finishes up. For example during the summer months when the World Series of Poker is running in Las Vegas almost the entire online community will be parked in front of their monitors watching webcasts of the final tables or riding the emotional highs and lows of friends or online contacts one-tabling the live tournament and an online break. Read more in our guide about .
Outrageous Poker Tweets that Hit Too Close to HomeLook for Newly Opened Poker Tables
All online poker rooms are constantly shuffling and opening up new tables to balance out the action. These new tables present great opportunities to find soft spots as the various poker rooms software randomly assigns new players to seats with no regard for track records or skills. The longest-tenured players at the old table will now be scattered to the winds and replaced with fresh faces – some of whom might be brand new players who just received their first deposit match.
The problem with newly opened tables is that the good seats – away from the narrows and close to the straddler – have already been taken by nosebleed stakes maniacs or by moderately successful grinders who know a good thing when they see it. So your goal is to jump on the new table list as soon as possible – even before the old table has fully dissolved – in order to grab one of the premier spots at the new table.
It’s a dance really – clicking the “find a table” icon just seconds before the current table collapses then instantly scrolling through the lengthy list of new tables until the perfect seat at the perfect table jumps out and says HERE I AM!
And then, of course, you have to actually click on the mouse to confirm your selection before some else grabs it. Easier said than done, of course, since a procedure this efficient at locating easy money would typically fall under the definition of cheating if it involved physically reading other people’s lips at the table or peeking at someone else’s hole cards.
In fact, in an effort to curtail this common if unofficial poker technique, many of the larger card rooms regularly launch dozens of new tables at slightly different levels than the adjoining tables. In the old days you could count on all the $1/$2 No-Limit Hold’em tables on PokerStake being immediately flanked by several new tables at $1.05/$2.10 – the classic grinder’s maneuver in search of ever-softer opponents.
But after years of manually squeezing your mouse between two emerging tables then clicking rapidly on the occasional Gold Ring, the various card rooms evidently grew tired of this common ploy and so they began launching new tables at oddball limits rarely seen in normal play – $1.20/$2.40, anyone? Or how about $1.05/$2.10 Limit? While annoying at first, poker players are a resourceful lot and eventually found ways to adjust to this irritant.
For instance, many players now routinely open up a table listing in their search settings so they can quickly home in on any new tables that might appear within their preferred limits – say, all the new tables from $1/$2 to $2/$4. Others simply scan the New Table list as quickly as possible in hopes of detecting one of these rare random launches. Still others simply give up and wait for the old table to fully disband, thus missing out on the potentially softer table mates.
How to Quick-Fold Poker Tables
Quick-fold poker tables are a great way to find new tables and opponents without having to leave the same table over and over again. With quick-fold poker tables (also known as snap poker tables) when you fold your hand, you are immediately transported to a new table with a new hand and new opponents.
Essentially you're getting more hands per hour because you're not waiting for all the other players to play out their hands at the table. Quick-fold poker tables are great for finding new opponents and avoiding tough regulars at the same table over and over again. Check out our ranked list of the best quick-fold poker games below:
Ignition Casino - Best Site for Fast Folding Poker
Fast Fold Poker (aka Uprising)
miami gardens casino- Available on mobile
- 4+ player heads-up available
- All-in insurance offered
- Competitions regularly over 1,000 players
is the best site for fast fold poker games, which they call "Uprising". There's plenty of fish at Ignition Casino Poker because of their unique "anon tables" which hide all of your opponents' stats. You have no idea who you're up against, which makes it incredibly popular among recreational players who don't want to deal with tracking software and databases.
The end result is a ton of fish at the tables and a perfect environment for fast fold poker games. Uprising follows the basic premise of zip code poker, kicking you to another table as soon as you fold a hand. You're always competing against completely different players, making it a great game for high volume, short-handed Hold'em cash games.
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Search Poker Tables by Limits and Player Count
Sometimes the easiest way to find a specific type of poker game is to change what you're looking for. Most online poker clients allow you to customize your search results based on a variety of factors - mainly the number of players and the blind level.
Instead of hitting the "Find a Table" button and looking for the lowest possible wait times (which usually results in reading the same tough regulars over and over again), try setting a specific table size (six-max, anyone?) and a blind level between ($1/$2 - $2/$4, for example). Then hit the search button and see how long you have to wait to get into a new game.
Chances are you'll have to wait a bit longer than if you searched for any available nine-max Hold'em game but when you do find a table the other seats should turn over much faster since there are fewer seats to fill. And let's face it - nine-max Hold'em games with six or fewer players are rarely worth playing since the blinds get so high so fast.
Top Online Casinos in the US (2023)Use Casual Cash Game Players to Find Empty Tables
Most casual cash game players follow the same pattern as the serious, winning grinders - they look for tables with available seats and click on the first one available. Grinders do the same thing except they're checking for tight, regular players and quickly moving on to the next table when it confirms to be a losing proposition.
The casual player, on the other hand, tends to focus more on the limit level, table size and number of players currently seeing a flop rather than the skill level of his fellow competitors. This disconnect in expectations creates a strange situation where a winning player sees the same pool of available tables and has two widely divergent choices on where to go.
The winning player will consistently choose the table with the toughest regulars in hopes of winning a bunch of small pots while quickly moving on when things turn sour. The casual player, however, will look at the same table list and pick the same nine-max, $1/$2 Hold'em game with five players currently dealing in because he's not actively trying to run up a month's rent in a couple of hours.
In fact, the second table the winning player left after two orbits might be the better choice for a straight-up cash game if you can get a seat before the orbit is up. Assuming none of the other players at the table are obviously skilled grinders, you have about a 50% chance of getting a decent seat before the music stops. At the second table? Well, odds are the winner from the first table will take one of the prime seats but the remaining regulars (if any) are likely to be winning players looking to make a quick buck just like you.
Meanwhile the casual player at the second table may bust out in 30 minutes or an hour but when he does he'll simply repeat the process and find another empty table with five players and deal. Perversely, the winning player who went to all the trouble to find the tough regulars might be gone any minute ... Or he might grind out 20 bucks an hour beating nits all day long. Either way it seems like a lose-lose scenario unless you happen to be that winning player. Right.
Of course this is all a vast oversimplification. Winning players can be caught on bad days or good players can occasionally go on epic heaters. And not all casual players are fish - some of them are clever Limit Hold'em specialists who will take apart a table of dumb Fixed-Limit Omaha players.
Still, in the long run the casual players are more likely to be making mostly correct decisions about 90% of the hands they play while the unknown skill level of the anonymous regulars is a total mystery box. That said, if you see a table with four or five other players and an unknown eighth seat, it might just be worth giving it a shot before the great snapshot of winning poker tables turns you into the next unknown eighth seat.
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Are Empty Poker Tables Harder/Easier?
You might wonder why empty poker tables come about and whether that indicates easier or harder opponents. For the most part empty tables come about because everyone at the table busted out and were replaced by a single new player. If the original table was filled with tough regulars, the replacement players are likely to be fishy.
On the flip side an empty table could simply mean a single player tabling it with no call or raise in his or her hand. This is often the case right after a big hand or flip. In this case the rest of the players at the table could be fairly evenly matched. It really just depends on why the table is empty.
Should I Leave a Full Table to Find Empty Ones?
It really depends on the action at your table. Most players tend to prefer fuller tables with nine players because there are more hands dealt per hour and hence more money to be made. However if you're sitting at a very tight table where nobody plays a hand (other than the button and small blind) it might be worth it to bail in search of easier opponents.
The key is not to get into the habit of leaving tables every time you bust or lose a pot. That's a sure fire way to constantly search for empty tables and you'll never get in enough hands per hour to make real money.
What's the Best Way to Find Fishy Poker Players?
See the section above about the smallest (worst) sites. Seriously though there are a couple ways to find softer opponents aside from playing on worse poker sites. One is to mix up your game and variations. Everyone playing Limit Stud on a table full of Hold'em regulars is bound to find fishy opponents who are unsure how to value bet OE vs 43o or whether to draw three cards or not.
Fun Online Casino Real Money Games to Play in the UKAlternatively you could simply look for tables with lots of re-buys or add-ons. Satellites and sit-and-go's almost always produce a couple players who qualified despite having no idea what they're doing. Rebuy tournaments and special freerolls are also gold mines for experienced poker players looking to find empty tables with fishy opponents.
Is There Software That Finds Empty Poker Tables?
Yes there is poker tracking / fourth party software that helps you locate empty poker tables faster. One of the features of poker HUDs and analytics tools is a table scan feature. This lets you quickly scan all the poker tables available on a single page and sort them according to various metrics. Some tools like PokerTracker 4 even let you set up alerts that notify you when tables of a certain variant, limit, player-count become available.
