Position vs aggro's

[Hawk]

Everything I've read about position says that you want players who bet a lot on your right, and passive players on your left. The explanation makes perfect sense, that you want the information on how the aggro is playing the hand while you can not be as worried about the passive guy behind you.

Lately, in particularly extreme cases, I found that I wanted the opposite positions.

In the last couple days I've been lucky enough to find a couple different "all-in -every-hand" players. In one case I had that player directly to my left, in the other case he was directly to my right. The strategy to take seems obvious to me in both cases, fold until you get a great hand and take a shot. The only thing I needed to worry about was the hands of the other players who were obviously following the same strategy. When I had the AI guy to my left, I was able to see who/how many of the other players were going to go after him, whereas when he was to my right I was first to act after his move.

When the AI guy had position on me, it was worth giving up position on him because it was almost like I was playing with ultimate position on every hand.

As I said, this was an extreme example, but if given a choice of sitting on either side of a maniac, HOW maniacal would he need to be for it to be best for him to have position on you?

...or now that I'm thinking this out more (as i type) it seems to be more an issue of predictability rather than aggressiveness, which leads to a similar question. How predictable would you want this player to be before sitting to his right?

If my questions are vague, it's because when as I wrote this I didn't have a particular question in mind. I'm more curious to see people's thoughts on the subject more than a hard answer.

[IPlayTight]

The thing about a player who goes all in every hand, is that position isnt the same as it is when you would get to play the flop turn and river. It changes to be position on every other player, instead of on him. You are completly right in thinking you should act before him, because you know that he will push, and will have position on every player that acts after him. What im trying to say is...that once someone pushes, the only position that matters is that of everyone else.

However, this only works if he is 100% to go all in everyhand. If he isnt, then you dont know he will, and the idea of trapping him with a big hand, like if you were in the sb and he the bb, may backfire as he may not raise at all for the reason that he assumes you are trapping. For this reason, you want to act after him, because u already know if he did bet, and he doesnt know anything about your hand. If you dont even look at your hand before he acts preflop, he has zero info about u...and may play his regular game instead of playing you. Basically, if i were in his shoes, and just raising 6x every hand...i would be very reluctant to do so if i saw people limp when they know im this much of a maniac.