Situation: your about to sit in your regular limit game. It's playing 5 handed at the moment. Seats as follows:

1 seat: known donator. loose passive fish type.

2 seat: open

3 seat: solid TAG type. plays fit or foldish postflop. is a winning player at this level.

4 seat: open

5 seat: decent LAG. plays too many hands preflop, but is good at reading hands and putting TAGs on tilt with his play.

6 seat: open

7 seat: a mouse. rarely raises without the nuts. plays very tight preflop

8 seat: open

9 seat: a unknown, you've never seen him before. call him "average joe" - i.e. an average breakeven player.

10 seat open

wheres the best seat? and why?

Does the tag have a good read on me? I think I sit in 2.

reasoning?

Oh yeah...reasoning

If seat 9 is average I am going to take his money because I am above average.
Seat 1 is terrible. I am going to take all of his money.

I want to know if these two players are in the pot (pf) so I can act accordingly and maybe get in some marginal situations. I also want to decimate them post flop. Generally I always try to get the worst players (loosest, most passive ones) on my immediate right and don't put much stock in anything else.

The tag on my left is a little troubling, but if he doesn't know I'm a TAG I have a while before he 3-bets me with KTs.

Generally I try to put the good players on my left and the bad players on my right.

I think I'm sitting in seat 6.

I'd like to be able to see what the two best players at the table do before making the majority of my decisions. Based on your notes the TAG is going to be telling me a lot about his hand by playing fit or fold, and the LAG is going to give me numerous opportunities to 3-bang him with premium hands preflop (likely getting Seat 7 and possible Seat 9 out). I'm also going to avoid getting my speculative hands ruined by the LAG player's preflop raises, and I can get away from marginal strength hands when the TAG enters strong in early position.

Finally, I'm looking to face the field with 2 cold frequently when the LAG bets into me, or trap them all for 2 when I bet into him.

Second choice... Seat 2.

I want to use this position to knock the TAG out of as many hands as possible. I also want to use the LAG a couple seats away to pump my super premium hands, either via limp/reraise or getting him to 3-bet me preflop. Similar options apply post-flop either for knocking players out or padding a pot that is likely coming my way.

Seat 6, please. LAG on my immediate right, TAG a little further right and Mr. Predictable on my immediate left in a seat with good vision of the board and all other players.

I hate letting good LAGs have position; seat 4 is the worst, you're trapped between the two most aggressive players.

I don't mind the TAG having position, when I raise he will usually fold. He plays tight anyway so we won't have many clashes.

I don't care where the mouse sits. He folds all the time.

You will make most of the money from Seat 1 and Seat 9, so Seat 2 allows you to intercept the money that is flowing clockwise from them. Letting the LAG have position more often is not great (you may leak a few chips to his stack) but at least you can pull a checkraise to build the pot on the flop, or bet into him to make him raise and face the field with 2 cold.

If you sit in Seat 6, you can beat the LAG & TAG marginally but they will be taking all the easy money from the two fish and will often be forcing you to fold or 4-bet preflop. Seat 10 gives you position that is neutral relative to the LAG and good position on the Average player. Plus the fish coldcalls a lot I'm assuming so whatever.

2 > 10 > 8 > 6 >>>> 4

8 really just about = 6
but I hate seat 6 a little bit more because it's in the middle and I can't see everything at once without turning my head. Plus I sometimes get paranoid people can see my cards or the dealer will sweep em away.

2 for me. I like Stamos uttered, like to have the gooduns on my left and badduns on my right. A lot of people like to have the good players on their right so they can have position on them but I never thought along those lines.

Six seat, not close. If this were a nine handed game things would be very different but if there's a tricky LAG in a SH game I want position on him every single hand I can.

ss,

suppose the game was 9 handed, other seats filled with unknowns. you could take your pick as to what opponent you wanted position on. what seat would you pick?

yeah thats what i was getting at. in a full ring game, why do you prefer to have position on the fish rather than the tags or lags?

in a shorthanded game, does your opinion change and why?

I think the implication here is that the other seats will be filled by random variables in the next 20 minutes.

six, because you will have position on the LAG and the donator.

When I imagine hands that will go down from seat 2 I picture fish limping UTG, you raising, and LAG cold calling or 3-betting. The TAG will get to chose when to battle with you.

From seat 6 I picture you fish limping UTG, then you get to see what TAG does, the LAG raises, then you get to CC or 3-bet.

Finally when a new player will join the game there is a 50/50 chance that they sit your your left making your seat choice even better.

Seat 2 easily. Get position on the fish. Sure having the LAG behind you isn't ideal but when selecting your seat getting position on the worst players who you're going to play the most pots with is your biggest concern. Also, if you pick any other seat you're going to be denied the chance to isolate the fish as often as you'd like to while the table is playing short-handed.

Although I think isolating the fish is important, I am more concerned that he doesnt have position on me, which almost levels the playing field. He will be cold calling with such a large range that I will be hesitant to value bet in spots that I would always be betting had I position on him after he checked to me.

I think of loose limit hold em as a push/pull sort of game, like high-low split games. I tend to prefer taking the seat that gives me the best chance of building big pots, not the seat that gives me the best chance of isolating. I like my hand-reading in multi-way pots and my ability to fold correctly for just one bet, so I tend to avoid raises whose main intent is to make decisions easier (like bloating the pot to tie yourself to it).

So I like seat 2. I want the LAG in seat 5 to raise too much preflop with a loose player eventually sitting down in seat 4 to serve as a buffer so he can't annoy me with isolation raises. I want the LAG to also c-bet too much on the flop, allowing me to trap the loose players who will probably fill those empty 6, 8, and 10 seats.

Does anyone else think that Seat 3 has a reasonable chance of going on tilt and becoming a donator in this game? If Seat 3 was obviously tilted before you even sat down, where would you want to sit?

I take the 6 seat because I have the lag on my right so I can iso 3-bet him when the situation arrises. To my left I have at least one TP who i can steal antes from on a regular basis. Sometimes I like having the loose passives directly on my right esp the ones that only bet with close to the nuts. That makes it much easier to know when to fold and such against them and it gives you more info than them just calling your bet. Overall though seat 6 seems best because of my first two reasons.

I'd like to add a secondary line of inquiry to this (awesome by the way) post... seems like we're split between seat 6 and seat 2.

What adjustments to your preflop range are you making in seat 2 as opposed to seat 6? How about post-flop adjustments (c-betting and attempted c/r for instance) between seat 2 and seat 6?

i'm sitting seat 6 for the basically same reasons as everyones mentioned.

Not really, I mean we assume in this question that he's the best "ABC TAG" player. Seat 9, the so-called average player, once he sees a single instance of someone isolating light, is more likely to respond to the aggression by coldcalling preflop with more "what the hell" hands like KTo, A5o, and 86s or worse - "everybody else is going in with crap, I will too".

Seat 6 is the safest but I think seat 4 makes you the most money.

In seat 4 you get to see what the TAG is gonna do but you have the ablitly to make the LAG pay to see his crap cards.

Six handed I will be pretty agressive myself so 4 is the seat I'd take. But if you get a run of crappy cards life is gonna suck.

This thread got me thinking last night when I was playing about table position more.

GG Kittage.

I was at an 8/16 table(9 handed table) that was like 8-9 handed a lot but varied to 5-7 handed when people were up wandering, eating etc. I was in the 6 seat with a Semi-Lag in seat 4 and a Tag in seat 3. Seat 1 was a calling staiton ,really passive guy who played every ahnd and cold called any PF raise. No seta relly opened up for a while so I played in teh same set for a while. Wasn't dping too good. It was hard to jump in with some hands cause the Tag or Lag would raise PF. The 2 seta opened up eventualy so I grabbed it. Now I had the Tag on my Imm lef, the Lag right nest to him and the passive donator on my Imm right. Funny how I started doing a lot better overall. Didn't get any better cards but I was able to raise PF and keep the Tag from playing more hands and I also could raise and value bet the donator in seat 1 more cause he more often than not had really marg hands that would call all the way down with. The table kept alternating from 5-8 handed and I still liked this position the best overall, short or full.

this is a great question to think about.

its very tempting to try and isolate the fish everytime he limps with any kind of playable hand. however this tactic is not likely to work for very long as it soon be obvious to the LAG and the TAG what you're doing, resulting in them 3 betting you lightly and making you take a flop with them HU or 3 way OOP. i actually think this seat has a lot of metagme considerations to it. try to iso-raise for awhile, and when the LAG and TAG catch on, nit it up again by either limping behind the fish or tightening up entirely (by folding). then again switch gears.

in the same vein, in seat 6, you can play more aggressively vs the TAG's and LAG's iso-raises and widen your 3 betting range in position, collecting the dead money from the tight passive and average joe and possibly the fish as well. you may also consider cold calling with a fair number of hands, trying to keep teh blinds + fish in the pot in position.

i think that seat 6 and 2 can both be profitable, but i think that it would take considerably more skill to make the same amoutn of a money in seat 2 vs seat 6. however, if seat 3 is a TAGfish who plays with dogmatic preflop standards, and the LAG is a poor player, seat 2 may work out just fine.