Play in weekly $5 $10 opt live $20 straddle home game generally consisting of 3 agressive pro's, 3 ok recreational regulars (me being one) couple of spewy fish and 1 massive whale. Buy ins range from $1k to $5k.

I have a relatively tight image that I occasionally use to my advantage (probably not enough though) . Players generally will reserve the same seat each week with me being in seat 1, the whale in 6 and the aggressive pros occupying seats 7,8 and 9.

My problem is I am finding it hard to get involved as the whale will open a high % of pots, followed by isolation 3 bets from one of the 3 pros in seat 7, 8 or 9 leaving me with the option of cold calling a 3 bet or 4 betting.

My strategy with premium hands has been to cold call the 3 bet to entice the whale into the pot and hope to win a big pot but these opportunities do not eventuate too often.

There is also a lot of instances of levelling wars going on between the pros before it gets to me in the attempt to isolate the whale, further inflating the pot before it get to me.

Should I be opening up my 4 bet range with speculative hands like mid pairs and suited connectors.

Will try and post some hand history's of this weeks game.

Stop being a nit

Great, looks like an awesome game to just sit there and nit it up! They'll be putting too much money in preflop relative to the strength of their ranges, which makes waiting for strong hands a very profitable and easy way to make money. Wish my games always had tons of action like this.

The counter strategies you adopt should be relatively easy for you to deduce. The fact remains though that this is not a particularly profitable game for you to be in and there is no reason why you should have to sit in a crappy seat every single session. Be diplomatic and make up some crap about wanting to try and mix up your luck. If you can't get a good seat at least try and get a better seat.

Your seat sounds perfect, you get to see all the action before it is on you and it sounds like you have position on all the loose and aggressive players which is perfect. Depending on sizing and whale tendencies and stacks, you can flat and shove a pretty wide range here.

Also I guarantee the 3 good players are playing waaaay too loose and exploitable. If you start with 1k and it goes 40/call/160 then you can jam a lot of hands

What seat would be better? If you were in seat 3-5 you would be upset that you can't open wide as the whale flats and the good LAGs squeeze you out the pot.

If your aim is to make money all you have to do is accept you will play less hands preflop and bluff rarely but shove a fairly wide value range.

Thanks for the replies. Its interesting that some suggest I open up my 3 bet range whilst others suggest my current more conservative approach is the most profitable approach.

ps, i am not upset about my seat position but just would like to get more involved and mix it up a bit so when i do pick up a big hand i am morelikely to get paid off.

Game on tomorrow night so will report on some hands.

If you really want to be annoying, but in for $1k and play the push/fold game preflop if it's 3bet before you. At 5/10/20, you will make it tough for the regs by shoving a range of TT+ ATs+AQo+. Once you double up, you can start min4betting instead with a similar range of (JJ+,AJs+, AKo, A3-A5s). And stack off All value hands. By condensing your range and reraising aggressively, you deny the good regs the chance to outplay you postflop.

Note: Didn't include SCs preflop as we're forgoing balance for simplicity.