Characteristics of a good game

Will in New Haven started a thread on rec.gambling.poker talking about what he calls a paradox of game conditions.

If two games are available the game with the better conditions will
attract the thinking players, making the game with inferior conditions
the better game.

The paradox arises when you think of structural characteristics of a game (such as rake structure, ante structure, or house amenities) as important.
The structure of a game actually has almost nothing to do with a games profitability. The characteristics of the players is pretty much all that matters. Structure only matters to the extent that "good" structure will attract a bunch of nits.
There really isn't a paradox if you think of game conditions in terms of the players rather than the game.

Tough games and game selection

Random Shuffle has an interesting post that touches on the idea that even tough games are good games if the dead money is deep enough.

At higher stakes the good games tend to have just one or two players who can be counted on to piss off a whole bunch of money. At lower stakes a good game tends to be one that has a bunch of players who can be counted on to piss off at least some money.

It's not really worthwhile to pick a game based on some rigid concept of how tough the lineup is, it's really just all about the amount of money that will be left on the table, not about how tough the lineup is.

Game Selection

A few years ago somebody made a post on rec.gambling.poker and asked where the best poker players played. I can't find that old thread but Caro responded with something like

The best players play were the best players don't play.

I always liked that answer.

While I'm not sure it helps you avoid really good players, you can often avoid the risk of finding table full of tight players by looking at the rake. Low rake games tend to attract tight players. And tight players tend to avoid games with high rakes.

So, although it might be counter-intuitive in that high rake games present a large hurdle to overcome, the best games are often the games with the worst rakes. Those games tend to attract players who don't care enough about the rake to even think about it.

It was a Bill Rini post about the rake at WSEX that caused me to think about this.