written by HLS2k6 DeucesCracked Coach
published about 4 years ago

You heard it here first: table selection is not important at 6-max limit hold’em. Mere table selection will not make you a winner if you’re just breaking even. Don’t get me wrong, you absolutely need to pay attention to game selection at lower limits to maximize your win-rate and combat the obscene rake. But table selection won’t get it done at six-max; you need to SEAT SELECT. With proper seat selection, I firmly believe a break even player who pays no attention to seat choice would literally crush the same lower limit by following one rule: THE LOOSE PASSIVE GOES TO YOUR RIGHT.

When Entity first started coaching me a couple of months ago, he initially commented that I am the most loose-aggressive student he has taught. In fact, our first discussion concerned toning down my post-flop aggression in certain situations. Despite my many leaks, he laughed and complimented me during one sweat session that I twice in one orbit said, “man that’s a [censored] river,” while I fired away anyhow. Despite my inner lag-tard, however, there is one area of my game in which I’m rockier than a 78 year old buried in a racing form at a 1-3 stud table—SEAT SELECTION.

Remember, if you’re playing $.5/1 while building your skills and growing your bankroll, so are other people. They’re watching “The Price is Right” and learning how to slaughter a $1/2 game while butchering their opponents’ names, too. You don’t want to play pots with them any more than you have to. You want to take money from the fish. Of the many types of fish in the sea, the one that is far and away the most common and the easiest to take advantage of is the loose-passive.

At lower levels (I play $3/6 and am starting at $5/10), the majority of my profits come from loose passive players. There are a number of reasons for this, which I’m sure you already know. They play way too many hands. They play them way too far. They stick around and chase when they’re behind, yet they give away free cards and miss bets and raises when they’re ahead. They win little pots yet lose all the big ones. Finally, when they do wake up and play back at you, you can absolutely believe their raise for what it represents—a big hand. Put simply, when luck does go their way for awhile, the only chance they have to avoid giving it back is to quit while that cruel wench variance has favored them over you and I.

Sure, tight-aggressive players have huge holes in their games at the lower limits, and a great player will exploit them. Likewise, overly-aggressive maniacs will bluff raise you their entire stack when they have zero fold equity and are drawing almost dead. But these opponents are fall less easy to exploit and far less common than loose passives.

THE RULE: Loose passives sit to your right. That’s it. It’s that easy. Try it. It will make an enormous difference in your win-rate.

More specifically, you want the loose-passive we described above either to your immediate right or two seats to your right. Never further and never to your left.

When a player is to your immediate right, he will have position on you once in the entire orbit. Not coincidentally, the only time that happens you will be in the small blind, anyway, the worst position at the entire table! When he is two to your right, he will have position twice, and both times you will be in the blinds, the least profitable positions anyway. Better yet, the loose-passive will never steal your blinds. He’ll limp in from the cutoff and the button, giving you free looks at flops you’re not entitled to see and free chances at pots you’re not entitled to win.

More importantly, when you’re not in the blinds, you’ll get first crack at punishing his mistakes with isolation raises. You’ll tell the other players that you have a hand, and force them to call two-cold or three-bet to play pots with the fish. You’ll be able to play tons of pots heads-up in position (the advantage of which is a whole other discussion) with someone who does not bet when he should, calls when he shouldn’t, and thinks a check-raise is a new frosted kids cereal with two-scoops of fruity goodness.

You’ll get to bet the turn for a free showdown whenever you want. You’ll get to check behind to induce a river bluff against someone who will never see what you’re doing no matter how many times you do it. Finally, you’ll get to value bet every single street when he’s drawing hopelessly behind.

By contrast, when the loose-passive is to your left—ABC LagTag play can be a nightmare when the board doesn’t cooperate. You’ll need to tighten up your raising standards, because your opponent will call two-cold with any hand, and invite the rest of the field with good odds and position on you to do the same. You’ll never know if AQ high is light years ahead of your opponent or drawing nearly dead, because he’ll call you down either way. But out of position, you’ll need to fire all three streets, or check and hand your opponent an invitation that even the biggest fish can read as, “I missed, so please take a stab at this pot.” You’ll have an unimproved AK against 4 opponents the loose-passive to your left invited along, and your position will force you to give up more than you’d like.

Unquestionably, there are counters to these problems. You can tighten your range. You can check-raise big hands to prevent him from betting in later hands. You can do fine winning less pots that are bigger because they’re multi-way. Many beginners don't make these adjustments, though, and just keep pounding away from out of position into opponents who will only fold when they're beat. These adjustments aren’t easy and they aren’t necessary to get started beating the lower limit games. Just pick a table where the loose passive is to your RIGHT. (This begs the question, who do you want to your left? The answer is a tight-passive or tight-aggressive player. He will play too few hands against your isolating range. He will give up his blinds too easily. And he’ll respect your raises because Ed Miller told him to.)

When picking a seat, there are many things you can look for if the opponents are unknown to you. Generally, loose passives are the most common BAD players, so be on the look-out for generally signs that someone doesn’t play well. First, look for an opponent who is severely short-stacked for the game. If he bought in for ten bets or has been playing and only has 8 bets in front of him, he might be good but almost always isn’t. Second, and better yet, if he open limps from any position, but especially from the cutoff or the button, and has an open seat to his left, you want it. Finally, look at how many hands he is playing, how many he is showing down, and what hands he is showing down. Replay those hands in your head, and it will be instantly clear if that player made the mistake of being too loose and too passive in the hand.

Don’t be afraid to switch seats at an online table. It happens all the time live (usually for bad, superstitious reasons), yet very few people do it online. I’ll very often see a better seat open, and race to grab it before someone else does. You need to make sure there’s no waiting list and risk giving up your current seat, but it’s worth it in many cases.

Finally, if you can’t find a good seat, YOU DON’T HAVE TO PLAY. If there are no good $3/6 tables, I’ll check $2/4 and $1/2. If there are none of them, I won’t play. Period. I’ve found that Pokerstars for example, is terrible on early Saturday mornings in the U.S. Eastern time zone. Two weeks in a row I’ve woken up eager to play, found the available games and seats sucked, and watched some videos instead. If you want to practice playing LAGs and TAGs, do it at lower than your usual stakes and realize that the session is about working on your game and/or challenging your skills, not maximizing profits. If you want the money to flow to you like Krantz is pissed off that you’re wearing a fruitier-than-a-tangerine Harry Potter scarf, PUT THE LOOSE PASSIVE FISH TO YOUR RIGHT.

DISCLAIMER: There is a more thorough and better discussion of this topic elsewhere, most notably in Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo. I am not claiming to say anything groundbreaking, only to put forth a simple rule that is well known to experts but not repeated enough to those of us getting started, yet which can have a much bigger impact on results than many of the minutiae we discuss here.