Poker-tracking software pre-arms you with a Big Brother-like number-crunching ally. It harvests every bet that your opponents make and feeds it into its databanks, rather than you having to keep an eye on four tables you’re not even sat at to get an idea of how someone plays.

My two recommendations are available to download at www.pokertracker.com and www.pokeroffice.com. As well as looking at individual player stats you can also view the table as a whole. The key stat is Voluntary Put in Pot (or VPIP). This tells you how loose or tight the game is.

As a general rule the looser the better. For six-max games you should be looking for tables over 30 VPIP; for six-max something over 20% is good. Happy hunting!