The Importance of Player Activity

When you’re shopping around for a new place to play some cards online, one thing that should definitely be taken into consideration is the number of patrons at the card room you’re considering.  There are a number of reasons why player volume is important:

Finding a Table:
While it may not take thousands of players to get a single game going, online poker rooms have a lot more table variety than a typical brick and mortar casino, which results in more dilution across each table.  A wide variety of table options such as the game you’re playing, no-limit, pot-limit or fixed limit, and the stakes of the game can all spread out a smaller rooms player base quite thin. 

When you’re looking for a table with a respectable number of players, the more active patrons at the poker room at any given time the better.  This is especially true when you’re playing games other than Texas Hold’em, or at higher limits where there are generally fewer opponents available even at more populated venues.

Playing ‘Other’ Games:
Texas Hold’em is by far the most popular game played today in poker rooms around the world, and online is no exception.  Unfortunately, if you’re someone that prefers to play 7 Card Stud, Omaha, or other variants, that’s won’t help you find a game.  A relatively small percentage of people are playing Omaha and Stud at any given time, and fewer still if you’re trying to play Razz or 5 Card Draw. 

That said, a larger player base makes that small percentage of players significant enough to find a table that suits your tastes.

Tournaments:
If you frequent sit-and-go tournaments (those pick-up, single-table tournaments that start as soon as the table fills), less activity generally means more waiting. In a busy room there is constantly new tournaments filling in less than a minute, in a smaller room you may have to sit-and-wait. 
Once again, this is especially true when you’re playing anything other than Texas Hold’em, and/or when you are looking for a game with higher buy-ins.

If you enjoy playing in larger multi-table tournaments and events with big prize pools, player activity is even more important. The fewer players as a whole a room has the less participation you can expect in any given tournament, and the fewer players means smaller prizes because there’s less entry money to go around.

Recognition:
If you have a style of play that can be identified and countered, it’s best that you know as much as you can about other players while they know as little as possible about you.  It’s easy to get lost in the crowd when there’s tens of thousands of other players, but much trickier in a smaller poker community.  On the flipside, if you’re the kind of person that needs a reputation to be successful (perhaps an aggressive no-limit player), you may prefer to play at a smaller venue where your name will more often be recognized.

Unlike the local card room, when you play online you never have to wait in line for a seat, so with a few exceptions - the bigger the crowd the better.