The Mad Genius of Poker
CHOOSING A WINNING SEAT
The secret to poker,” a young woman I’d been
trying to date told me long ago, “is to find a lucky
seat.” Back then, I needed to set people straight. So,
I prodded, “What would make one seat luckier than another?”
Provoked, she curiously asked about my birthday. “You’re
a Taurus,” she told me. It was the sixties, the age
of astrology, and if you didn’t know your sign and how
it interacted with other people’s signs, you probably
weren’t going to get laid.
“I don’t believe in that stuff,” I blurted, choosing confrontation over affection.
“It’s proven,” she stammered. “It’s science. It’s real. You’ll never be able to choose a lucky seat. I pity you.” These words seemed strange to me, coming from a woman I’d lent $500 to yesterday. As she stormed away, I nodded in a cocky, knowing, superior way, so the audience that had gathered wouldn’t think I stood there defeated.
If you weren’t part of the poker dating game in the hippie era, you have no idea what I’m talking about. Emotions were volatile, except mine. I still believed in logic at a time when the mere word itself was disdained. Anyway, I’ve been sidetracked again.
NO LUCKY SEATS
There are no lucky seats. Cards arrive randomly,
and although there are hot seats and cold seats, you
can only see them by looking in the rearview mirror.
It’s always after the fact. On the very next hand, the
chances that the hot seat gets good cards are no better
than that the cold seat does. Weird streaks really do
happen. Often. But if you declare a fresh starting point
during any perceived lucky or unlucky streak, the cards
from that point on average what is expected. They may
continue to be good in a “lucky” seat or continue to
be bad in an “unlucky” seat, but the reverse is exactly
as likely.
Now that I’ve told you that there’s no reason to presume any seat will be luckier than any other, I want you to think about this: It’s important to choose the best winning seat in poker! You see, there’s a difference between a lucky seat and a winning seat.
PROFITABLE SEATS
Although your chance of getting good or bad
hands remains constant in any seat, your expectation
of profit is not constant. There are good seats and
bad ones. Here’s what you need to know.
You often have a choice of seats when you begin playing. Even if there’s only one seat available, you might still choose a different game where the seat is more favorable. Or, once you’re seated, you can watch for an opportunity to switch to a more profitable seat. There’s a huge difference between having a policy of choosing and moving to better seats and just letting fate decide. I suspect if you’re just spinning your wheels, not paying attention to choosing the most profitable seat, then you can race toward the big profit just by being selective.
Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to end today’s column without telling you which seats are more profitable. Here goes…
HOW TO DECIDE
Players who act after you have a positional
advantage, because they get to see what you do before
they decide. And players who act before you have a positional
disadvantage, because you get to see what they do before
you decide. This advantage is so powerful that if you
could put a weather satellite up in space and have it
focus on a poker table, you would see a powerful current
as the money flows clockwise around the table, from
right to left – the same direction as the action.
In order to take advantage of position, you need to ride the wind, cruise the current, go with the flow, whatever. We understand each other, right? Okay, there are two main types of players you want seated to your right, so you can act after they do.
Loose players. They barge into pots with pitiful hands. You want to act after a player like that, because then you can apply your aggressive raises when you hold superior hands without chasing away that action. Loose players call most blinds and most bets, but they don’t call most raises. So, if you’re in the wrong seat, acting before them, your raise is likely to scare their weak hands out of the pot. But once they call that first bet and then you raise, it’s different. They’re committed, and usually they’ll call, already having trapped themselves. Even if they don’t call, they’ve surrendered something to your pot that you wouldn’t have gained had you acted first. So, favor a seat that puts the loosest players near your right.
Skillful and aggressive players. The reason for this is that if you take a seat on the opposite side, letting this type of player act after you, then you won’t have dominance over your game. You’ll have an intelligent, assertive, and often tricky foe muddling up your strategy. This is precisely the type of player you would like to see act first, negating his positional advantage.
Sometimes the choice will be difficult. Do you want to take the seat with the loose player on your right, or the one with the aggressive player on your right? Although that will be a tough choice sometimes, usually it won’t be. Whether the choice is easy or hard, chasing down the most profitable seat helps build your bankroll.
One last thing: There’s a type of player who can safely sit to your left and act after you. That’s a tight, timid player. Although everyone who sits to your left has a positional advantage over you, the tightest and least aggressive players won’t maximize that advantage.
So, there aren’t any lucky seats in poker. But there are winning seats. Go find them.
— MC
Mike Caro, "The Mad Genius of Poker," is today's foremost authority on poker strategy, psychology, and statistics. A worldclass player, he is founder of Mike Caro University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy (MCU -- with online campus at Poker1.com). His research and accomplishments have been cited in over 100 poker books, other than his own. E-mail: mike@caro.com. Play poker with the Mad Genius at DoylesRoom.com.
