So you can wreck your home game. And when you hit the local card room, by playing super tight against the degenerates, you can scrape out a buck or two. But what happens when you sit at a table and can’t find the fish?

Do you stubbornly sit there trying to beat the game or will your ego let you admit YOU are the fish that these sharks have been waiting for?

A big, big, HUGE part of poker is game selection. It’s probably the second thing you need to learn after hand selection. So what are some tell-tale signs that you might be in over your head?

1. There are lots of deep stacks. Say you’re at a 2/5 NL table with a $200 buyin. You look around and see the majority of the folks with $1500 and above. It’s probably a sign that you won’t be running this table any time soon. And the key to any truly lucrative session is the opportunity to RUN the table not just win a hand or two.

The problem with deep stacks is they can afford to take more risks to crack you. This comes through a combination of aggressive plays that put you to the test and some padding to chase you down. I find that I often don’t bet properly against big stacks since I’m doing two things that sometimes counteract each other. One, I’m trying to double through on them. And two, I’m trying not to lose all my chips in one hand.

You can see how these two impulses contradict. You can only double up if you risk all your chips.

This is something I’m working on but I notice I often bet small, and in effect, fail to protect my hand, when I’ve got a hand to try and induce a bluff and maximize value. And then I overbet my marginal hands to try and take them down right then and there. Well, when you’re deep stacked and you’re good, this is nakedly transparent. So what happens? The deep stacks’ll linger on your big hands and crack you at cheap prices. And come over the top on you on your overinvested mediocre hands. Whoops!

I tried a different move this time in Vegas where I was short stacked for around $90 at a 2/5 NL table with a lot of deep stacks. I got dealt pocket kings in early position. Instead of limping which would totally neuter my hand, and instead of coming in for a reasonable raise of $25-30 which I think would’ve broadcast its strength (i.e., I’ve already committed 1/3 of my stack so it’s obvious I’m willing to go all-in), I simply pushed all-in there hoping to get a single caller anticipating a race situation with either a smaller pocket pair or A-10 or higher. That seemed to me the best way to ensure a double up opportunity.

The play worked out. I was called by AQ on an eventual monster board of KQQJJ. Some may say I could’ve earned even more money from this play but I was happy that short-stacked, playing aggressive, it looked like I had something marginal instead of the monster that I did. Remember someone was calling me from being zero dollars invested in, to 90 bucks cracked.

2. You can’t put anyone on a hand. Chances are the table’s been going for some time, and hand selection has become more liberal. Now if you have the patience to pick your spots (if for instance you can take Jon’s advice from an earlier post and wait for at least 1/2 an hour before you play a hand), you may be able to work yourself into this game. However, if you’re like me, and you want to get into the action immediately, and don’t appreciate the aggression of big stacks constantly attacking your blinds and limp-ins, you can get into all kinds of trouble with so many disguised hands.

For instance, you’re dealt JJ on the button. You raise the limpers $35 and still get 5 callers. Flop comes out 9 high. What do you do? There’s more than $150 in the pot, you’ve got about $300 back. How much do you want to protect your hand, one, and, two, how much do you want to get invested? By the way, if anyone can answer this question, what’s the proper bet in this instance, I’d love to know. Because I’ve been cracked in this situation more than a couple times.