Changing seats to gain position

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 08 October 2008 / Leave a Comment

Situations often arise in cash games where changing seat will give you a larger edge than where you currently are. These situations come up frequently when there are one or two players who seem to be either tilting hard or just generally playing extremely weakly. In these situations you always want to try and do your utmost to get in a seat that will give you position on such players. You always want to try and be on these sort of player's left.

As players sitting on your right will always have to act before you, there is a huge advantage to be had by having position on them - their already weak game is even easier to attack when you consistently have position on them. The only key problem with moving seats is that it can make the players suspicious of your motives - it can often ruin what was otherwise being seen as a loose fun game, by adding an extra dimension of seriousness to the proceedings.

When playing live this is usually not a problem, as you can simply play the superstition card and move on the basis that you feel your seat is unlucky. This strategy has the added bonus of making you look like a player concerned with luck and superstition - always a good thing, as it often makes your opponents think that you are a weak player.

Having position on weak players is such a key concept to remember and focus on in poker; yet it is one that you see player after player consistently ignore and not take seriously. This is especially true when playing online, where you can just jump on waiting lists and take seats at random as they come up. Although this is fine at lower stakes, where the games all have a similarly poor standard, at the higher stake sit is critical to start looking closely at the players at a table and the statistics on the table (how many players are seeing flops, bet percentages etc).

Once you have identified a good table, or a weak player at a table you are playing at, take any opportunity to move seat and get as close to their left as possible. This is a poker technique that anyone can do - it requires no experience or practice yet can really push up your win rate.