Poker is a unique game in the sense that players can often put money into a pot as they consider their hand to be good only to bail out of the hand before the turn or river. This is NOT a play money lesson but a lesson of finding free money/chips at the cash tables.
Finding free money at the poker tables is profitable, I mean we are talking about money and talking about it being free. I’ve talked before about Winning With Table Selection, looking for the right tables. This is going to be one of the things your looking for.
Poker players all play their own style of the game, some loose and some tight. These poker player types have tendencies preflop but we need to know what they are doing on the flop/turn/river and most importantly what they do at a showdown.
Folding Money Ratio
When we are looking for a table to sit at we need to be counting the times that no hand went to a showdown, this is finding the the folding money ratio. If no showdown is present then the ratio is 100% and knowing that no hand gets shown means there is a lot of free money at the table.
Most tables have a 50% FM Ratio, most games are between the 20%-40% or the 60%-to 80% range. Players are either call trains or to timid to call bets with weak/modest hands on the river.
When the ratios are closer to the 0 or the 100, it should tell you how to play that table. Mixing up your game to how the players at your table are playing is always the optimal winning strategy.
I get what your saying… the lower the Folding Money Ratio, means more showdowns are happening which results in a higher suck out value.
Shows why its always a good idea to watch the table and take in all the info available to you, before sitting.