The Right Seat at the Poker Table Does Matter
Poker
Oct 9, 2001, 18:00
By Lou Krieger http://www.gamblingonlinemagazine.com
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How should you position yourself in relation to your opponents when you play poker? Is choosing the right seat important to you? Make no mistake about it, seat selection is important. It's also an aspect of the game many players ignore.
Choosing a seat is one of the most important decisions you'll make in a poker game, particularly when playing hold'em, because position is fixed for the entire hand. Unlike 7-card stud - where betting position often varies depending on the exposed cards - if you are late in position on the river.
I believe the single most important decision in any form of poker is game selection, and determining which cards to enter a hand with runs a close second. Depending upon the competition you'll be up against, seat selection is usually third in importance among strategic options encountered in a poker game.
Game selection, of course, presupposes that you have a choice of games available to you. In Las Vegas or Los Angeles, where there is usually more than one game at each betting level, game selection takes on the attributes of an art form.
Regardless of your skills as a poker player, more of your winnings are the result of poor decisions made by your opponents than tactically clever plays you make. In other words, the best player in the world, sitting in a game with players who are only slightly inferior in ability, will not be favored to win as much money as a good player in a gane populated by weak players.
If you live in an area where there is only one game available, then game selection becomes a simpler matter. Either it's a good game and you should play or it's a bad one and you ought to pass. Choosing the right starting hand is also critically important, and more has been written on this one aspect of poker than probably any other facet of the game. Suffice to say that if you don't have standards to guide you when confronted with a decision about contesting a pot or passing, you have precious little chance of winning in the long run regardless of whatever other skills you might posess.
When recommending seat selection I always say "Sit to the maniac's left." When you're in a game with a maniac - the kind of player who wants to raise every pot - position yourself to his left, so you act after he does. That way, when you do have a hand and he raises, you can make it three bets. Even in games where playes routinely call raises, very few will routinely cold-call three bets without legitimate hands. In fact, if you position yourself to act after a player that raises indiscriminately and you get a line on the kind of hand he is prone to raise with, you might be able to loosen your standards a bit and gamble with him, as long as you are re-raising with hands that figure to be better than his.
My colleague Roy West contends: "Your best seat, if you have a choice, is to the right of the action player, or to the left of a tight player, go for the loose player."
Although everyone is entitled to their opinion, I have to disagree with those preferring the maniac on their left. Mike Caro has said this for years in his seminars "Money flows clockwise, like a stiff breeze, around the table", a proof positive statement about the advantages of acting later, rather than earlier - simply because acting later provides additional information about opponents' hands. Early position requires a player to act without any knowledge about the real or purported strength of his opponents' hands.
When you act last - after everyone else has had an opportunity to either check or bet, or fold, or call, or raise - you have acquired a great deal of knowledge about the actual or represented strength of your opponents' hands, which should be used to guide your own decision. After all, if it was really an advantage to act early, wouldn't most players rather be under the gun than on the button?
According to Caro, players who are tight, timid, easy to bluff, and who surrender blinds belong on your left, while loose, skillful, aggressive players, as well as those with lots of chips, and players who give lots of "walks" belong on your right.
While you usually can't arrange a table to maximize all these attributes, try getting the loose and aggressive players on your right. Why? You want them to act first. If raised, you can release a marginal hand. If you can make it three bets - essentially freezing out all but the very strongest hands. Three-betting builds a big pot, while cutting down the number of players you must beat before raking in those chips.
You want loose players to act before you do. Even players who routinely call with weak hands usually won't cold-call a raise with that same trash hand. But once involved for a single bet, they will call your raise when the action gets back to them. By acting after they do, you have the ability to trap them for two bets. If they acted after you did, your raise might cause them to fold instead of calling with hands that do not figure to win. Since money flows clockwise around the table, it pays to put those most likely to throw it off on your right. When the wind fills your sails and your spinnankers are flying, sailing is a lot easier than talking into a stiff breeze. And when you sit to the left of loose players, so is poker.
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