Seat Selection

I read the document about seat selection on the main page of this site, but I was a little confused about what position meant, it said give position to the weak players, but take it on the big stacks, could someone please explain this?

sschulze,

I too was confused by that terminology and the entire concept of "position" when I first started reading about poker strategy.

When this site says to "Take position on big stacks", what that really means is "sit directly to the left of someone who has a big stack of chips" (i.e. the right hand of your character would be next to the left hand of his character). If you can't sit directly to the left, then one or two seats away is alright. This "gives you position on him", which means you will have the advantage of acting after he does.

When you sit directly to the left of a player, he will be acting before you do on every single hand (except when he has the button). This gives you a big advantage over that player.

Its good to take position on tall stacks because they tend to play aggresively. Its bad to be "out of position" against an agressive player, because a lot of times when you try to limp in, they will raise it preflop, and you will end up either folding or having to call that raise in order to see the flop. Same kind of thing happens after the flop too. If you had position on him, you could have folded after his raise or big bet without losing anything. Also, if someone has a tall stack they are probably a good player, and you always want to be in position against the better players at the table.

Also, sit to the left of loose players and to the right of tight players.

you want to sit the left of loose players so they wont come over the top of you when you bet and to the right of tight players so you can take a lot of pots from them