I would argue it's the most important thing. Different game flow/dynamics warrant different positioning.

If you've ever felt like the game was EZ-MODE it's probably because you had superior position for the dynamic taking place on the table without even realizing it.

Not maybe, very wrong.

Position is everything in poker.

About how much extra bb/hour could a player gain by seat changing (like maybe once per hour max) rather than that same person just staying put the whole night?

That's obviously an impossible question to answer.

However, if you don't think position matters, you have some giant leaks.

"I couldn't beat my grandmother if she had position on me."

- Phil Ivey

Just to be clear, we are talking about "relative" position, i.e. basically choosing which seat to take at the table. Obviously being in position in a hand (i.e. being on the button is a huge advantage).

I guess as a thought experiment, say there was a table with 3 fish in Seats 2,3,4. Seat 5 is open. And then there are 3 good LAGs in Seats 6,7,8. (Seat 1 and 9 are open as well). Which seat would everyone pick to sit down at?

In my mind, if you were to sit in Seat 5 then any hands involved with the fish you will be huge positive EV, but then any hands involved with the LAGs you are say medium negative EV. If you were to sit in Seat 1 or 9 you will probably be small positive EV in hands with either the fish or the LAGs.

That is obviously a very rough approximation, but I guess my point is that there are advantages and disadvantages for either spot. If the difference is say <0.5bb/hour at choosing Seat 5 over Seat 1 or 9, I might be inclined to just stay put since as others have pointed out, constant seat changing creates a predatory atmosphere, not to mention slows down the game. If the difference is like 2bb/hour or more (which it could be, I have no idea), then I could see the argument for seat changing.

I hope I am not coming off as argumentative, as I am genuinely curious as to what people's thoughts are.

You can set up a table where there is no premium seat - and you can set up a table where there are clear premium seats.

Nits to your left, action to your right is worth many many bbs/hr.

If you mix up the table and spread the action players out, then there is not much difference in seats.

However, if you are very deep with another player, being in position on them the majority of hands is a big big deal.

What you are arguing now is nowhere near what you said earlier:

Obviously if changing seat in which seat change has no value, then there is no value.

But if the comparison is between never changing and having the option to change, change obviously has the potential to be of higher EV.

If the game is playing huge because of a particular player I'll often move to their right.

Including table changes. I would say I seat change an average of 5-6 times a session.

You mean to their left...? Unless you just plan on limp/3bet squeezing all day

No, he means to their right. The maniac becomes the new Blind Bet, as they're always betting preflop, or whenever checked to. So you limp squeeze or limp call depending on the action and your hand and print money. Sitting to the left and attempting to iso with a wide range is suicide if there are even reasonably competent players at the table. This is the relative vs absolute position argument that gets rehashed constantly in the strat threads.

First off, I don't know what fairy tale of a world you are playing in where there are 3 good LAGs at one table. I've only met a very small number of good LAGs in LLSNL.

While good LAGs play more hands than TAGs, they still generally play less hands than fish who play practically every hand.

I think direct position on the fish is more important. Being on the left of the LAG will tie your hands a bit. The fish will limp and the LAG will open, forcing us to fold hands that we would otherwise open with ourselves. Of course we could 3bet the good LAG more but what that does is fold out the fish and isolate the good lag which is exactly opposite of what we want to do.

As for seat selection in general, I'd say that often times it is even more important than table selection. Being in a bad seat with a big fish or two on your left could be the difference between the table being profitable or not.

BTW, there is merit to what 11t said about seat selection. Particularly in bigger games, you will definitely take heat for continuously changing seats. Most of the fish in these games understand position (even if they don't utilize it much) and may take offense to the predatory nature of your seat change. That being said, if I want to change seats, I will change seats particularly if it will greatly impact the dynamics of the game. However, if it's just a marginal benefit to change seats I will stay put because changing seats is pretty much telling the player on the right that you are coming after his chips.

Once I was in the 8, kid (although he was probably older than me) was in the 7, 9 seat leaves, kid moves from 7 to 9 I guess to get position on me, I saw the next guy coming who was 100 and didn't want pos. on him so I move to the 7, kid immediately moves to the 8 to have immediate position on me again, and since the old guy was making a career out of walking over I had the chance to move to the 9, and keep him oop to me, which would have been great. But I didn't.

And by the way, I own the movie rights, so don't get any ideas.

Worst part IMO is people constantly asking for the button(s) with no intent of changing seats.

Usually when one guy asks for the button the dealer runs out from other people thinking they need a button too. Most common seat change I see in Vegas is people wanting a view.

+1

I played my first 12 hour day for the first time since 2011. I actually felt good. lost 250 tho

Congrats bro! For realz, it feels good to be able to put in long sessions. I feel like a god. But it's probably stupid to do unless you're playing primarily in the zone or you have so much equity at the table, you can get away with your C game.

I think the seat change issue is very much player pool dependent. The guys who are higher stakes regs have a much different view than those of us still slumming it in the lower games. I hop around all the time and no one cares or thinks too much of it. Even if they have an idea about what I'm doing they don't know what to do about it nor do they have any inclination. Since I'm a nice guy nobody ever cares that I'm poaching easy money. If RP is as big of a DB as he says I can see why people might get cross with him about it.

in my hours at higher stakes I would say seat changing is very rare. like the above poster mentioned the risk of making the special guest feel poached and making the game tougher is too high for most plus normally you are trying to beat everyone in the modern 5/10 environment due to how few big losers are in the games.

also my thought on the seat change thing is this: I never move to the left of a good player. I may move to have position of the fish. The reason I don't move to the left of good players is that the majority of winning regs in games aren't picking on you anyway. I would rather have a good rec on my right and a pro to my left than a good rec to my left and a pro to my right.

you can even use an aggro reg to your left to give you visibility in games that tend to have lots of multi way pots. bunch of other stuff. plus position is marginally important. money flows to the left regardless and if a reg is weaker than me I'm going to be able to further marginalize his advantage. another thing is if a guy moves to your left he can't really just 3b you like crazy because he risks losing the weaker players out of the pot.

also as a population read people don't adjust or play tough enough or just go bonkers 3 betting other regs. it's just not as much of a big deal as people think it is.

If they have it, you can't have it. It's the same reason the Yankees tried to sign Doug Mirabelli, the same reason the Pats signed Wayne before GB could even talk to him, the same reason to draft 3 great QBs/Defenses in fantasy.

I have come to the conclusion, based on what I've read in books & articles, along with my variance over the last 795 hrs of live play, that one needs ~2350 hours of playing live to establish a solid win rate.

I base this on 25 hands per hour [which you won't always get] which is 58,750 hands.

I play 25-30 hrs per week. That's actually sitting at the table being dealt into the hands.
That's 27.5 hrs * 48 weeks a year. I take time off.

That's 1320 hours & I need 2350 hrs to get 58750 hands. I've played 795 hours already, so I need another 1555 hours of play, or 56.5 more weeks of play.

So I think I'll have a solid win rate established in 1.17 years, or, ~14 more months. That being around election time, November 2016. Thoughts?

I've heard 1500 hours is a good gauge but obv the bigger the sample the more reliable the outcome.

My sample is right at 4k hours. 3k of the hours are plo high only. Are u asking about hold em or plo samples?

I think with plo one would need around 4k hours in a similar game.

My swings are huge and sample gets skewed and distorted because I have played plo as small as 1-2 on those electronic machines. To 1-3 spread limit hold em thats like limit hold em and nl hybrid. To 50-100 plo.

If your stake is similar its way easier to figure out.


Basically confidence intervals is what we are talking about. So the way to frame this would be like "after 1k hours we can say with 70 percent certainty that our expected winrate lies between x and y."

After 5k hours maybe we get to 95 percent certainty. Etc.

I just made the numbers up but im sure you get the idea.




There is no absolute.

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