What are the advantages to seating arrangement at the table? If I know a certain player is strong, do I want him on my left or my right? What about a weak player (I assume it’s the opposite of whever I want the strong player)? My instinct says I want the strong player on my right, so can see how he bets before I have to. Does it even matter?
You’re thinking of black jack…poker it doesn’t matter. In black jack the best position is 3rd base (the last seat).
Seating most certainly does matter in poker. This article by Mike Caro indicates that aubries’ instinct may not be correct.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Position is vitally important, critical, in poker. As my friend Number’s link said, you want to act as late as possible and after the strongest players. That is why you pass the buck around the table after each game so everyone has the opportunity to play last.
If you play with the correct strategy, your odds of winning will not change one bit in a different seat when playing blackjack. The only way to win in blackjack over the long run, unless you are an excellent card counter, is to be the house.
Haj
Also, if youre to the immediate left of a strong player, you dont get to see how the rest of the table responds to his plays. It is best to have some players in between to buffer yourself from his bets/calls.
That is why you pass the buck around the table after each game so everyone has the opportunity to play last.----
That’s my point. No matter where you sit, your going to be in the middle sometimes, on the end other times, first sometimes. There is no start and finish “on a poker table”…so where you park you butt doesn’t matter. In most REAL poker games (how many of you have a regular game, be honest) each deal rapidly goes down to two players, usually. Seating is the least of your worries.
"If you play with the correct strategy, your odds of winning will not change one bit in a different seat when playing blackjack. "
Really, that’s odd…and contrary to every book or instruction I’ve ever had. 3rd base gives you the opportunity to see when others have messed up the strategy…which is table wide not individual based. It also gives you the opportunity to how many face cards have been played.
I think I’ll invite you guys over to my game.
I have played thousands of hours of casino poker up to the $6/$12 betting level. I also have been in a regular game for years on and off. Kitchen table games are nothing compared to real games, my friend.
You are mixing up a couple of things. Yes, the individual seat doesn’t matter and position does. The position does change from round to round but your relative position to other players does not change. You want to act AFTER the better players as often as possible.
**
OK, I can see how this would be true in a single deck game but those are nearly impossible to find anymore and you’d still have to be an expert card counter. You have just as much chance of the deck getting leaner after the other’s have played which eliminates your advantage as a counter. In a multi-deck shoe it will not make a difference no matter what.
Haj
I should add that position in poker is most important in flop games like Texas Hold’em and Omaha, a little less so in draw and a less but still important in stud.
Haj
Metroshane said:
You have it exactly backwards. In blackjack, 3rd base only offers you the very limited advantage of getting an extra 10 cards or so of penetration per shoe, usable for playing strategy only. In a shoe game, that advantage is irrelevant. In a single deck game, it is worth a few hundredths of a percent in advantage, but only if you are counting cards, in which case the added exposure of being at 3rd base makes it a really bad idea to sit there. If you’re a card counter, seat yourself at the table randomly, and stay out of 3rd base.
In poker, seating position matters a LOT. Note that there are two types of ‘position’ at the poker table. Position relative to the button, which rotates around the table and all seats are equal, and position relative to other players in the game. This stays fixed, and varies in importance from not at all to drastically important.
Unfortunately, there are no easy rules for choosing the best seating position. Do you want to be sitting to the left of a maniac? Maybe. If the players behind you are very tight and conservative, you can often re-raise a maniac and force the good players out of the pot, then rope-a-dope him.
On the other hand, if there are good, agressive players behind you, you don’t want a maniac on your right. Because if you raise him, the next player may figure out what you’re doing, and re-raise YOU. Or you may get trapped between two maniacs, which is not fun.
In general, I like to have the tight, predictable players immediately on my right. That way, if they enter the pot from early position I can ditch hands like AJ and KQ and stay out of their way.
Anther good strategy: If there is an extremely tight player in the game, try to get him on your left. You can push him off of blinds with raises, and because he plays so very few hands you’ll be last to act more often (because he’ll fold a lot of hands on the button that others would play, giving you last position), which is a significant advantage.
I do not like having maniacs on my left most of the time. It forces me to play way tighter than I otherwise would, and limits how much money I can make in the game.
What time, and what’s the buy-in? (-:
Excellent dope, sam. You hit every item I was going to address in this post, and then some.
A bluffer or a ‘maniac’ will show his (or her) colors early, and bid a pair of deuces or treys up through 3 raises. You can’t TRUST them again, and you know they’re full of sh*t. The problem comes when they get a full house or a high 3-of-a-kind.
Bluffing does NOT pay off in the long run, since the guy next to you has a flush and plenty of $$$. He (or she) will be quite happy to accomodate your influx of capital until you say ‘uncle.’
I realize this is a slight hijack and the actual betting circumstances are very complicated, but Sam is right on the money.
What is the difference between a single deck game, and whatever you call something that isn’t a single deck game?
Seems to me that you wouldn’t want to mix up 2 or more decks into the card pool, at least not in poker. I can see how you could do that in blacjack with minimul chance of two people having the same cards, but I just can’t see it in poker.
No, I was talking about multi-deck blackjack. Most blackjack games around these days use multiple decks because A) it’s a defense again card counters, B) It speeds up the game, with fewer shuffles, and C) it improves the house edge slightly by making it less likely to get blackjacks.
The multiple-deck games being discussed are hijack…er, I mean blackjack.
I’ll concede my point to Mr. Stone.
Does that mean that we’re uninvited from your weekly game? 
Haj
you’re all still invited…I only conceded because I was out numbered. I’ve read several books and even rented some video tapes on black jack instruction and all recomment 3rd base. But I’ll concede that your opinion is different. Per the info…the justified advantage of card counting is there…however minute…but that’s not the real advantage. The reason is because black jack strategy has to be held by all the players to work…haven’t you ever seen the guy get dirty looks from all the other players? It’s the table against the dealer…not you against him. For example, say you’re on first base, the dealer is showing 5, maybe I have 14. Everyone knows that the 5 is a bust card…so hold (unless you have something absurdly low…11 or under). At first base, you’re counting on ALL the players to the left to let the dealer bust. If someone screws that up and takes the dealers bust card the strategy is broken. Now if you are on 3rd base you can see when someone screws up and you can adjust the strategy. The is the same for 1 deck…or the more common 4 deck.
As far as poker, I can see Sam’s points…but have never really seen it as a realistic problem. Maybe if it’s a beginner game (not saying Sam plays beginner games) and everyone is trying to stay in the whole time on every hand until they get beat…then maybe you got something. But in the regular games I’ve been in (my experience) and watched on the world series of Poker, most guys go out immediately if they don’t have anything. Very rarely do 3 or more folks battle out a hand. As a matter of fact, very rarely are all the guys in the same hand (you can’t dance every dance.) So, like I said, usually is you against one or two other guys. And in flop poker…if you don’t have anything after the flop…fold. So there you go again, mano a mano. A good player with a good hand is going to play you no matter what the “maniac” is doing.
Now really, all of this is niether here nor there because you play against the man…not their hand. I concede to Sam b/c if he sees a strategy there, then good for him…seating is important for his strategy. But I’ve never seen anyone gripe about their placement at the World Series of Poker.
If you’re talking about basic blackjack strategy and not card counting, then this is not true. The way the other players play does not affect your odds of winning, although it does affect the outcome of a given hand.
You gave the example of a player ahead of you hitting when they should have stayed. It is possible that this extra hit will cause the dealer to win when he would have otherwise busted. However, it’s also possible that the extra hit will cause the dealer to bust when he would have otherwise won. These two events (changing a win to a loss and changing a loss to a win) have the same probability. The net effect on your odds of winning is zero, except for the small effects on card-counting situations.
Are you saying that you make different decisions about playing your hand based on whether the other players are following correct strategy? As in, you might hit a hand you were going to stand on, because of the play of people ahead of you?
If you can name one book on blackjack that uses this logic I’ll eat my hat. It doesn’t matter one bit how bad another player plays. If he hit when he shouldn’t there is just as much of a chance he did or didn’t take the dealer’s bust card as there is if he hit when he should’ve. Yes, I’ve seen people give dirty looks when bad decisions are made, but that doesn’t mean they know a thing about probability. So when are you having that game?
Metroshane said:
That’s why I said “it varies from being critically important to not important at all”. In some games, it’s irrelevant. In wild games, it’s very important.
Hey, I LOVE beginner games. You’ve got a game full of beginners? Invite me over!
My suggestion to you - if you’re playing in games where you’re usually heads-up against another good player, or with only two other players… Find a better game.
I never play home poker. My game of choice is Texas Holdem, preferably at limits of 10-20 to 20-40, or $500 buy-in pot limit games. At these limits, you should be able to find plenty of games that have large, multi-way pots.
The World Series of Poker is different. First of all, tournament strategy is very different from ring game strategy. Second, the WSOP is no-limit Hold’em. That too has a very different strategy. And third, if you’ve been watching it on TV, you’re seeing the very last part of the tournament, where outlasting a single player is worth significant money, and the strategy changes yet again.
Again, ‘anything after the flop’ for many players often means second pair, a gutshot with a 3-flush, bottom pair with an overcard, two overcards and a 3-flush, etc. The average loose-weak player can convince himself to play on with all kinds of scrap. I should tell you about the time I lost an $1100 pot in Hold’em with the board being 8s8h7c8c, and me holding 8d7d.
There are only so many good hands to go around. If you’re playing in a game where everyone is sitting around waiting for the nuts, either learn to take control of it and be the one who picks up the abandoned pots, or go find an easier game.