If you're at a table where there's a villain raising and fourbetting 90% of his hands and there are 2 to 4 villains coldcalling his raises with what seems to be the same range they'd limp along with, what SEAT do you want at that table?

Conventional wisdom says you want to be immediately to his left so you can try to isolate him - at this table the villains were coldcalling 2 bets with just about anything but tightened way, way up when faced with the prospect of coldcalling 3.

But isn't it also helpful to be on the button when he's on, for example, EP+2 at a 9-handed table so that when he raises you have a chance to trap the coldcallers for 3 bets when you have a strong hand? (assuming a 9-handed table - BB, SB, EP, EP+1, EP+2, MP, HJ, CO, BTN) That gives you 3 chances during a standard orbit to act after he does. The problem is you'd have to try for a limp-reraise in the other 6 seats.

I guess being immediately to his left is the surest thing because you're basically playing heads up against what you can be confident is a signifcantly worse hand, but you miss out on chances for really big pots.

Thoughts?

I’d want to be to his left and the left of anyone who would call three bets light

I think either to the left of the crazy person or as far across the table as possible is ideal. If we are a few positions away from him, we can have a good idea of what will happen before the action comes back around to us. Sometimes this is even the ideal spot depending on the adjustments from behind.

Being directly across from a player like that is best but there is something to be said for being directly to his right. If he's raising everything you can limp your strong hands, he raises, get a table of callers pre, and then 3-bet. Post flop is the same thing: You flop really big and you can do it again.

across the table. being directly to his left sucks, you just end up folding everything or being sandwiched. nobody is going to let you isolate on a loose table so you end up 3 betting a fairly nitty range, folding a ton of hands preflop, and then inevitably end up tilting because 1) you end up folding winner after winner when you fold pre and 2) when you finally get a hand to 3 bet with, you lose anyway.

having to play overly tight in wild games is poor strategy from both a pure math standpoint and a psychological standpoint.

yeah, you want to be immediately after all the coldcallers.

From my experience, this is the seat selection equivalent of FPS. How many times per session are we actually interested in Limp/Raising a maniac to trap other people in for 3bets?

If we sit to someone’s left, and people are always calling 3bets anyway, we’re not missing out on anything. Whereas if we limp/raise, we’re not going to want to do that with a linear range, and there’s a very narrow amount of hands we will want to do this with.

I can see merit for check/raising flops, but we also have more control of the size of the pot sitting to his left than to his right.

Nothing fancy about it. If I can't get the better seat across the table and the one on his right is available I would take it.

I was planning to start a new thread with this question, but I think it's related enough to the question in the OP to be worth including here.

What, if any, adjustments to your own coldcalling range do you make at a table like this?

I'm not sure I'd make many - if I'm going to coldcall two bets with suited connectors, aces or broadways I want at least a 5-way pot and I want passive postflop play so I can chase draws cheaply. If I'm going to coldcall with a pocket pair I want at least a 5-way pot and I want crazy bets and raises after the flop so that if I do hit a set I win a bloated pot. In either case, I think I'm ONLY doing this in late position regardless of my relative position to the maniac. You just don't have enough control over the size of the pot if you're not acting last.

Assuming this is sound advice, it begs a similar question - what if you are in a set to the RIGHT of the maniac and a seat change is not an option? Are you stuck only limping hands that you intend to 3-bet when the action comes back around to you? I'm not crazy about limp-calling suited connectors, broadways or aces, or pocket pairs knowing we're going to have to play out of position postflop and we don't yet know how many coldcallers we're going to get.

Hope that made sense.

Strangely enough, if there are people consistently calling the maniac's raises, it is not so bad at all to be sitting to the immediate right of a 90/90/90 maniac. As @ninefingershuffle pointed out, we want to be to the left of the idiot coldcallers, and with the maniac to our left we will always have best relative position with respect to the idiot coldcallers, and will often have absolute position as well.

Funny, last night I went to play and the same maniac was across the table from me, and there was ANOTHER maniac in the seat to my left. And yes, there were hands where they were raising and re-raising EACH OTHER - HUGE pots were getting built at that table.

The maniac across the table left about an hour after I sat down, and shortly after, one of the strongest players in the room sat to my right, and two seats to my right was another player who is not "super strong" but has some clue how to play - I did NOT want to seat change away from having position on the 2nd and 3rd strongest players at the table so I just stayed there.

Early in the session, I had AQs UTG, I raised, the maniac said, "HE raised?!?!? HE hasn't played a hand all night!" and called me. The second player said, "I know right? I'm a little scared, he's sitting over with his hoodie and his mask - I can't call that!" and of course he called anyway. The next guy said, "All right, I'll donate" and called. 6 players ended up seeing the flop.

I decided to try out the strategy of limp-reraising monster hands:

• I had AA UTG and limped, the maniac to my left raised, 5 coldcallers including both blinds, I re-raised, the maniac 4-bet and everybody called.
• A couple other times that night the strategy worked equally well.
• ONE time I limped, the maniac FOLDED and I ended up seeing a 6-way flop for one bet (yuck).
• One time I open-raised, the maniac 3-bet me, and only the big blind coldcalled. I 4-bet and they both called.
• There was one time there were 3 limps into me, I raised, the maniac 3-bet, the limpers and big blind coldcalled, I 4-bet and everyone called.

This is WAY too small a sample size to draw any conclusions about whether or not the limp-reraise strategy works in general of course. But it SEEMS like if more than one other player has already entered the pot, you might as well go ahead and raise because they're not going to fold any amount of money once they've entered a pot. I don't think the limp-reraise strategy is terrible if one or zero players have limped in ahead of you. Also, I don't know whether or not this is mathematically correct or even matters, but I was limp-calling suited connectors, suited aces and kings and connected broadways, so it's not like they could automatically put me on aces when I limped in (or that they'd act on the read anyway).

Hope this was useful or at least interesting!

in very (like 5+) mulitway pots you should be raising/3bet/capping suited aces and broadways.

I want to be to the right as well