General priniciples, prioritized


The following are probably not too controversial in isolation, but I'm presenting the relative priority I give them in making decisions. I welcome criticism:

1. Bad players on my right, good players on my left. Money supposedly flows to the left in poker, which makes sense.
   
2. Loose players on my right, tight players on my left. Tight players mean my CO or HJ is effectively another button. Fortunately, this is pretty consistent with the previous point.
   
3. Aggressive players on the right, Passive players on the left. There’s great informational value to knowing aggressive players’ action. Note that this is often at odds with the first two points.
   
4. Really aggressive players, the kind who are betting a majority of flops checked to them, probably shouldn’t be on my direct right. They will routinely put me in bad relative position. I greatly prefer them closer to across the table, maybe 3 to 5 seats to my right in a 10-handed game.

A typical example

In one game I frequent, there are multiple player types of vastly differing skill levels. Therefore, I'm constantly facing tough seat selection decisions. The other day I was in the 9 seat with the first seat change button.

Cliff's:
Seat 6 is open. Much of my win comes from loose preflop play from 4, 3, 2, and 8; and from near-maniacal postflop play from 2. A bit comes from passivity from 1 and 5, but they're not in many pots. 4 is the guy who really scares me, but I think he plays tightly when I'm in the pot.

Full lineup, from my immediate right:

8. Fairly wild player preflop -- not too crazy postflop. In particular, likes to 3 bet preflop in multiway raised pots.
7. Extremely good young player -- former full-time pro, excellent hand-reader, probably knows as much more about O8 than I do, sometimes gets in a gambly mood preflop "to loosen the table up" and then forgets to change gears back. He views me as a good player and usually won't enter hands involving me without solid hand values. He does seem to value the challenge of the game much more than profitability, seems to like HU battles with the players whose game he respects, and in particular does analysis at the table way too much for my taste (which I've pointed out in private).
6. OPEN
5. Very old guy - good player, pretty tight, especially tight postflop, not totally passive.
4. Unknown middle-aged male - from a small sample one of the weaker, more passive players at the table.
3. Older somewhat aggro guy, plays a little loose pre and pretty aggressive post.
2. Young woman, lately has been playing even looser pre and near-maniacally postflop.
1. Old guy -- Pretty tight pre, pretty passive post.
10. The game host - older guy, very good player, pretty closely matches my game pre and post.

Lately I've been often ending up to the right of 7, the strongest player. I hate being OOP to him so much, but I figure he's not usually trying to make my life miserable and I should be focusing on my donors.

Would you take the open seat?

Clear as mud? Hope this helps:

Nice, well thought out post. It's not clear to me if the strongest opponent is in Seat 4 or 7, but generally I want my strongest opponent across from me unless his style of play dictates otherwise.

That's close to my take.
1.Although I agree money flows to the left, there seem other things more important than where good or bad players are seated.
2. I prefer tight/passive opponents seated on my left, and for the reason you have given, basically that they'll probably fold behind me, thus upgrading my position.
3. But if they're tight/aggressive, I'm forced to play tighter than I want to play when they're seated on my left. I can play tightly, but it's not much fun for me. Since I'm playing for recreation, that consideration is more important for me that it may be to someone playing to make money.
4. I prefer loose/aggressive opponents seated straight across the table from me where I can easily watch them, but without obvious staring.
5. It doesn't matter to me where loose/passive opponents are seated.

I don't think about that in that way. Maybe I should.

No. I think you're better off in seat #9. (I think I'd be better off in seat #9).

Buzz

If you move and seat 9 stays empty then surely seat 6 becomes the worst possible seat on the table with those 3 players acting directly after you?!

Very good post, thank you!

I would stay:

1) you have great money in front of you. given this player's style, it's important that he'd be to your right from a defensive standpoint, as well.

2) you have a couple tight players behind you = position when CO and HJ.

3) moving would mean having no money to your right.

4) really important - moving would also mean you are oop against a tough player who likes to play hu pots with other good players (that means you!) it's a poor decision on his part EV wise, but you stand to lose from it, too! who wins from it (or at least loses less)? all the greens!

I'm convinced that the best situation in LO8 is to have a postflop maniac to your immediate left.

This is the situation that I try to establish, but I assume it is a function of the games I prefer and my style of play. Having the postflop maniac on my laft gives me a better sense of pot odds and implied odds, and, more importantly, serves as a Judas Goat to herd the rest of the table to my hand.

Interesting.... I see the advice in this thread as mildly conflicting, but perhaps it has to do with the nature of the players involved. So consensus is that we want a good aggro to my right but a maniac to my left? So we're prepared to reject the "money flows to the left" rationale and end up to the right of the worse players, at least the maniacal ones?

It says this in one of the books - might be Zee (sorry to be so vague). I can't stop myself getting position on the loose fish, and the TAG the other side. Maybe I need to look at it again.

It depends on the overall makeup of the table. If there's a maniac along with some loose passives and maybe a couple of TAGs in the game, I'd rather have the maniac on my left since most pots will be multiway and relative position will be important. With the bettor to my left, I can peel closing the action, I can c/r big draws and big made hands with dead money caught in between, you pretty much force the other players to play their hands honestly.

If it's more like an online 6max game with 4 other TAGs and 1 fish, I'll take position on the fish and isolate him like it's hold 'em.

FYP

I always shoot for getting weak tight players to the left, loose fish and good players to the right, maniacs across the table.

I thought about not making this post for a couple of days because it doesn't really address the OP, but the person I *really* want on my left is the person who sells out his intentions.

When playing live O8 I gather the cards when they are dealt to me, at the same time sneaking peeks to see what they are. When it's my turn to act, I put my head down, point my nose at my cards, peel them back...and roll my eyeballs left so that I can see the player(s) on my left. This is when they give away their intentions.

I am sure that there have been whole threads and whole books that tell how opponents do this. They press the fold button or they freeze. They put one hand on their chip stack and finger the top chip or they finger the top eight chips. They put a chip on their cards or they merely hold them.

Watching will give me a lot of information, and when my head is down and they think I am not looking is when opponents give it up. Not all players do this. Some do it all the time, Some do it only when they are bored or on tilt. Some players don't do it all. But sometimes I can pick up the 1st leftward player, sometimes the first 2, sometimes I can pick up 3.

If you think about it, when playing high, all the profits from a session can come from one or two hands, and knowing what your opponents are doing before the flop can make or break the session.

For this reason, I hate the 10 seat. 90% of the dealers won't lean back and can't be bribed or scolded into doing so. The 1 seat has better vision and shields me from part of the table, so it's better.

When I see that the players on my left aren't giving up any info, I start thinking about a better seat, but it's just one factor of many.