Where to Sit in Lowball

Position is important in lowball, perhaps even more so than in flop-type games. In hold'em, you'd like to have the maniacs and aggressive players on your right, and the passive players, particularly those whose blinds are easy to steal, on your left.

In lowball, position has another effect: Not only can you control by your betting the players who sit to your right, you also can find out how many cards they are drawing before you act, and this often influences your play. In lowball, you can participate in determining what will be the final constitution of your hand by deciding whether to draw cards, and if so, how many. In any but draw-type games, all you can do is elect to continue or fold, but you can't change the outcome. Yes, in seven-card stud, you can by your betting influence whether the player on your right stays or folds, and thus either get his card or have the card you were going to get end up in his hand. But if you're drawing to a flush with one more card to come, the odds will always be approximately 4-to-1 against your making the hand. If the opponent you're trying to beat already has a full house, you cannot alter the fact that you cannot win the hand. In lowball, though, you can elect to stay on a 9 against a pat hand, and maybe have a 100 percent chance of winning the hand if your opponent has a pat 10. If she has better than your 9, you can toss the 9 and, depending on what she has, change your chance of winning from 0 percent to as high as 42 percent.

Given all that, in lowball, you'd like to have the live ones, those who draw two cards frequently and draw to rough hands, on your right, so that you can raise whenever they're in with better than what they figure to have. In such case, you raise with any one-card draw to a 7 or better, with any pat 9 - or 10 in late position - or better, and so on. The trouble with that is that any other sharp player at the table knows how you have adjusted your play, and if someone behind you has a big hand, you might end up losing three or four bets on a hand that you might not have played in other circumstances. Or, the live one might "wake up" with a good hand, and again cost you several more bets than if you were playing against someone else. This greatly increases your variance. Nonetheless, most lowball players want to sit as close to the left of the live ones as they can.

While I'm always happy to have such players to my right, I find another lowball position even more desirable. I want to have the predictable players to my left. Even more so, I want to have as close to my left as possible a player who lets me know ahead of time what he's going to do, particularly before the draw.

Since lowball is very much a game of position, the hand you open with is greatly dependent on position. You shouldn't open from early position with an 8 to draw to or with a rough pat 9. You can open with these hands from middle positions - and from late positions, particularly from the button, with worse. That is, from the button, you can and should open with a 9 to draw to, with a rough pat 10, and sometimes with a pat jack, and you can open with most two-card draws. Doing this is always risky, though, because while you figure to have the best hand with only two players (the middle and big blinds) left to act, if either has a raising hand, your hand suddenly becomes a severe underdog. It's not like it is in hold'em, where if you open from the button with something like 10-9 and the big blind raises, you might be something like a 2-to-1 underdog. You can call the raise and look at the flop, and if you don't hit it, get away from the hand while the bets are still small. In lowball, typically half or more of the action happens before the draw. In lowball, you might open with a hand that has virtually no chance of winning, or the odds against your winning are as high as 10-to-1.

If a player sits to your left who is so readable that you know before you decide to play whether he will enter the pot, you can easily decide not to open with a hand that otherwise is a percentage favorite against unknown hands. If I am on the button with 9-8-3-2-K and the action has passed around to me, I will normally open. In a Southern California double-limit game, I come in for a raise, and in a Northern California single-limit game, I open. But if I know the player in the small blind intends to play the hand, I don't want to come in, particularly if he is a relatively straightforward player, because the hand he figures to have is probably better than mine. Not playing such hands when I know someone else will come in saves me lots of bets in situations in which I'm taking the worst of it. Ordinarily, if I open from the button with A-2-3 and one of the blinds raises, I call, because the extra bet I put in is now offering me as much as 6-to-1 (8-to-1 in a single-limit game if both blinds are in) down to as little as 3.5-to-1. I call because the odds against my winning are usually better than 3.5-to-1. Nonetheless, I would prefer not to have to put in any of those bets, because I'm still putting in either two or three bets with, overall, the worst of it. While calling the raise itself has a positive expectation, putting the initial bet in if I knew the pot would be raised - or even if I knew for sure that the small blind would play - was a mistake.

For this reason, I like someone like Sally on my left. She has been playing lowball for more than 40 years and has been a loser all that time - and doesn't know why. Part of the reason is that she telegraphs her intentions. If she will not be playing the current hand, she sometimes spreads the cards with all the paints revealed, presumably so that someone next to her can commiserate about her bad luck or not accuse her of "having no gamble." Other times, she holds the cards impatiently, with her wrist cocked as if to flick the cards as quickly as she can into the center - and as soon as the person to her right has acted, she does just that. On the other hand, though, if she is going to play, she holds the cards patiently while waiting to see what the person to her right will do. In those situations, she often grabs with the hand not holding the cards as many chips as it will take to make the bet - four if she's going to call and sometimes even eight if she's going to raise. I don't care how live the live one is who is sitting two places to Sally's left. If I am on Sally's right, I will stay there all night. When I know Sally will fold, I can open from the button with any even remotely playable hand. When I know Sally will play, I throw away many of the marginal hands. And if I know she will raise, I can slow-play hands with which I might otherwise raise so that I can then get an extra bet in. It has happened that I have had a pat wheel and one player has opened and another called. Normally, I would raise in that spot. But this was one of those times I saw Sally patiently waiting with her cards in her left hand while I had seen that she had picked up eight chips that now lay concealed in her right. I just called, and, as expected, Sally raised. The others called, and when I reraised, everyone called the extra bet. That put another three bets into the pot for me.

Jim is just the opposite in tells, but almost as predictable. When he holds the cards in such a way that it looks like he might pitch them, he likely will play. But when he stares intently at the cards and has chips in his hand, he usually will fold. If he leaves the cards flat on the table as if he couldn't care what happens to them and will presumably push them toward the dealer when it's his turn, that's when he's most likely to raise. Jim's tells are not 100 percent reliable like Sally's, but they're more than 80 percent. Jim exhibits the weak-is-strong-and-strong-is-weak tell, as opposed to Sally's straightforward telegraphing of her intentions. Sometimes when Jim is staring at the cards, which usually means he'll dump the hand, if someone opens, he calls. But it's almost always with a weak hand, such as one to a rough 8 or worse, or a two-card draw. He never raises in that spot, and if the pot is raised when it gets to him, he folds.

Best of all is if I can have Sally on my left and Jim to her left. Then, when it's my button and everyone passes, I can often open without even looking at my cards because I know both Sally and Jim will fold. Or, contrariwise, I can decide not to open with a rough 8 to draw to because I know both will call - and maybe one will even raise.

Situations have come up in which I was first or second to act, and had something like an 8-7 to draw to or a pat 10. Normally, I would not open with that hand any earlier than from the cutoff position. But I could see that both Sally and Jim were going to fold. I also could see the cutoff spreading his cards so that the button could see that he held what was presumably a fistful of facecards, while the button was doing the same thing. They wouldn't be showing their cards if they were going to play. Thus, I could open from first position with what was only a last-position hand - because I knew that the four players to my left were all going to fold. If one of the blinds then played and it came to a showdown, from the constitution of my hand, the other players might get the mistaken impression that my opening requirements were very loose, and play more liberally against me than they might a player with a tight reputation.

So, for me, having predictable players on my left is often worth more than having live ones on my right.