Seat Selection

Such is the state of online six-max cash poker that now even the low-limit grinders put serious effort into understanding good table selection. However, table selection’s younger cousin, seat selection, oddly gets relatively little press. Seat selection is not a new concept. Mike Caro was one of the first to write about the subject and since then there has been a huge amount of literature on optimal seat selection. The beauty of learning good seat selection is that it’s a relatively fast and easy skill to learn and gives you an edge over other regulars.

Seat selection is like any other skill in poker, such as hand-reading or value-betting. But for whatever reason, a big proportion of regulars at all but the highest stakes do not put enough effort into it. Multi-tablers (playing six or more tables) can perhaps be somewhat excused, but if you are playing optimal poker at one to four tables then there is simply no excuse for not table selecting properly. And if you are not seat selecting, well, you are simply being lazy.

Basic Seat Selection

Basic seat selection comes down to the fundamental rule of poker: you profit from other players’ mistakes. When we are in position, their mistakes are amplified either on their own accord or by us effectively using position (to bluff-raise someone who continuation-bets too much, for example). The primary goal of good seat selection is to make your life (as a solid TAG) as easy and as profitable as possible.

This generally means having fish to your right and tight players on your left. If you can find the correct seat it enables you to play a lot of hands in position against bad players, open a lot of pots in order to abuse your advantage later in the hand and generally play well. Tight players on your left make it easy to play poker. They wont get in your way, don’t know how to abuse your position and play face-up, which makes life easy.

Good seat selection comes down to identifying an asset, which is usually a very loose-passive player or a super loose-aggressive player. Your goal is to get either the seat to his direct left or two to his left. These are known as the ‘Jesus seat’ and ‘Thomas chair’ respectively. These names are a reference to the seats in relation to the villain Judas in Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. In the Jesus seat you get to play a whopping 83% of hands in position against the mark, which is fantastic because the vast majority of poker winnings come from getting involved in pots with fish in position. The further away you are from the mark, the less the table is worth to you overall.

Times Are A Changing

The problem with basic seat selection is that times have changed. The games are generally much tougher with fewer and fewer whales and many more good aggressive players. So, how does this impact on our seat selection strategy? Relative positions and table make-up are far more important now than say three years ago. Let me give you two examples of how relative position matters depending on table make-up.

On the first table you have immediate position on a loose-aggressive fish (say 60/35) sitting 100 big blinds deep and you cover, but a good LAG is to your immediate left and is playing very aggressive with stats of 35/25 with a 10% three-bet frequency. On the second table you are to the direct right of a very loose-passive calling station playing 40/3 and the rest of the table is made up of very tight ABC regulars. Which is the better table?

The second table is much better despite the fact that you are out of position. On the first table our relative position in the middle of a LAG-fish and a good LAG means that we will get in a lot of high-variance spots, as we will be unable to isolate the fish by raising and cannot call in position. The reason for this is that a good LAG will recognise our attempts at isolation and will cold four-bet and squeeze a lot of the time, making it difficult for us to see flops in position against a fish. For the record, it’s not smart to regularly squeeze fish out of the pot pre-flop. The bulk of the money goes in post-flop, not pre-flop with these guys. More about this shortly.

The second table is much more profitable due to the specific weakness of fish: they call too much. When a player is a calling station, position matters far less as they will generally let us know when we are beaten, let us bluff them off pots, not know how to abuse position and let us manipulate the pot size on our terms, even out of position. Possibly the only downside is that we will often value-cut ourselves with the worst hand as they don’t know how to maximise value, but that’s the only disadvantage I can think of.

Cashing In Your Fish’s Chips

If a player is willing to put in decent amounts of money post-flop, you should always choose the table he is sitting on. Bear in mind not all fish are alike and there are many that have terrible pre-flop stats but decent post-flop stats. Given that far more money goes in post-flop than pre-flop, you want to make sure you are sitting with fish that like calling down the streets with bad hands.

Looking at our previously mentioned tables, it’s interesting to see how the second table doesn’t become nearly as profitable if the player is a loose-aggressive fish. This player will use their position and aggression far more optimally, and by playing aggressive poker will be playing better from the outset.

We can also use other types of player in our seat selection. At tougher limits we can endeavour to keep tight nittier players to our left, who won’t abuse their position and take as much money off us. These should also be considered an asset. Position also becomes more important as stack sizes increase. We would generally always want full stacks to our right (+EV for us) and short-stacks to our left (-EV for us).

Your ideal table would be a mix of loose-passive and loose-aggressive fish in the three seats to your right and a couple of overly tight short-stacks to your left. Try to manipulate your seat depending on table make-up. If there are a couple of habitual squeezers to your left, start limping with bigger hands and isolate with a tighter range pre-flop.

If you find a table without any obvious fish (and this has become more and more common) try to keep the aggressive players to your right and the passive players to your left. You should also try to keep tighter players on the left and the looser ones on the right. Remember that as stacks get deeper position is vital, so be pro-active and move seats if need be. You can massively boost your win-rate by playing position well in bloated pots versus bad players.

Conclusion

Seat selection is a skill that lets you gain or accentuate an edge. In the online poker world it is pretty hard to have an edge all the time at all your tables, so you should be constantly looking for the very best table across multiple sites. Only take seats at good tables if they are valuable and be on the lookout for opportunities to move to better seats. I see so many regulars facing up to each other day in, day out, perhaps only slight favourites over the rest. On these tables, generally there is only one winner in the long term: the house.

Be selective and cherry-pick the very best seats on offer, taking into account the position of everyone as it can make a huge difference. Try to avoid the super-aggressive short-stack two to your left and hunt down the drunk idiot two to your right who is opening 100% of pots pre-flop with a 500 big blind stack.

Seat selection is part of a more intricate set of poker skills, but has the benefit of forcing your win-rate up and making it more sustainable. Don’t be lazy – take the time to pay attention to seat selection. Like everything rewarding in life, you get out of it what you put in.