Choosing Your Seat

This article revisits a topic I discussed several years ago. This time, it is primarily for the benefit of former online cash-game players who have recently switched to brick-and-mortar (B&M) card rooms. If you are strictly a tournament player, this column won’t help much unless you can bribe a tournament director into giving you your choice of seats.

When you were playing online and preparing to sit down at a table with more than one open spot, hopefully you understood that one seat might be better than the others. Typically, the two most important considerations should have been:

Knowledge of your opponents’ tendencies. It’s usually beneficial to have the more aggressive and unpredictable players to your right, and the more passive and predictable ones to your left. If you typically played at a given limit and took good notes on your opponents, then you probably recognized several of them every time you sat down, and you already had a good idea of their styles.

The stack sizes. You’d rather have the larger stacks to your right and the smaller ones to your left. It’s more important to know what actions the larger stacks will take before you have to make a decision about your hand. Obviously this applies specifically to no-limit hold’em.

Now that you’re playing in B&M card rooms, you have additional considerations that never were a concern online. If you want to excel, you have to observe your opponents constantly. You need to:

Look at their faces, especially their eyes

Observe their posture

Listen to their breathing

Gauge their level of tension

Catch their reactions (both subtle and obvious) to bets, raises, flops, turns, and rivers

Note how they hold their cards

Watch how they handle their chips

And look for any additional tells that will give you information

If you made a habit of multi-tabling online, then clearly you have the ability to observe several things at once. Now it’s just a matter of switching your focus. You still need to use your powers of observation, except now you must concentrate all of them on one table, and you need to take note of your opponents in ways that were not possible online.

Now let’s bring this back to the subject of seat selection. You want the best vantage point from which to observe your opponents. Most importantly, you want to be able to see them before they act so that they might give you an idea of what they intend to do when it’s their turn. With those things in mind, there is clearly one seat that is better than the others — and that is seat No. 1.

The key is being able to see the opponents to your left. In theory, you could do that from just about any seat, but the point is that you don’t want to make it obvious that you are observing your opponents. You want them to remain relaxed and unconcerned, so that they will continue to give off as many tells as possible. In seat 1, the opponents to your left are all within your line of sight just by looking straight ahead. Seat 2 is a little to your left, but should still be within your peripheral vision. Seats 3, 4, and 5 are all right in front of you. If any of them are telegraphing their intentions, you’re in the best place to see it.

Contrast this to seat No. 4, for example. You can see your opponent in seat 5, but to see seats 6 or 7, you’d have to crane your neck around the player to your left. Besides the fact that it’s difficult to do, you are making it fairly obvious that you are trying to continually watch your opponents. That will make them more self-conscious about their actions, and in turn they will be less likely to give off any obvious tells.

There’s another advantage to being in seat 1: You can get a clear look at the opponents to your left, but those to your right can’t get a clear look at you. In that sense, it’s the best of both worlds. As much as we try to avoid it, we all telegraph our intentions at times. Maybe your hand prematurely moves toward your chips when you’re ready to raise, or it moves toward your cards when you’re folding.

Either way, sitting in seat 1 allows you to get away with it. The player in seat 10 definitely can’t see you, because the dealer is in the way. Seat 9 has to make an extra effort to get a look at you, especially if the dealer is on the heavy side, or if he keeps his hands far out in front of him when he deals. Both of these players are at a disadvantage. Since most of us unintentionally give some clues as to whether or not we plan on calling, raising, or folding, we might as well situate ourselves where it will hurt us the least.

Following that line of thinking, it should be obvious that the worst seat to choose is seat No. 10, or whichever seat is directly to the right of the dealer. You can’t see the players to your left unless you lean forward in an obvious manner and peer around the dealer. On the other hand, the players to your right have no trouble seeing you. It’s the worst of both worlds.

This makes my planning simple. If I’m being called to a new game, I lock up seat 1 immediately. If I’m joining an existing game, I’ll take whichever seat is open, but then look to make a seat change to No. 1. If the only seat available is No. 10, I’ll take it, but then make the first available seat change to any other spot.

Some players would rather continue to choose their seats based on their opponents, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to sit to the left of the most aggressive player, or the left of the deepest stack, that’s valid. Personally, if there is one player who is far and away the “live one,” I’ll often choose my seat relative to his. Other than that specific case, I put more value on being able to watch my opponents and not have them be able to watch me.

If you’ve been strictly an online player, watching your opponents is one of the most important adjustments you’ll have to make. Choosing the right seat will make it much easier. ♠

Matt Lessinger is the author of The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker, available everywhere. You can find Matt’s other articles at www.cardplayer.com.