So I've decided to use a reprint of my book chapter to discuss what I think are flaws in Krieger’s and Adams’ thinking on the subject,  and generally to update my thoughts on the subject.  It’s a somewhat long chapter,  and I’ve added material to it,  so it’s going to spread across three or four articles here.

Picking a seat.

You want to pick a seat that gives you an advantage.  Some seats really are more advantageous than others. 

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Location,  Location,  Location

Your location in the betting sequence,  your position,  makes a difference.  It matters.  Some positions allow you to gather more information before you act than other seats do.  The more information you have the better decisions you can make.  The later in the betting sequence before you have to act,  the better.  Mike Caro has frequently made the observation that money flows clockwise around a poker table  --  it follows the betting sequence.

In their Pokermagazine.com articles, Kreiger and Adams both misapplied Caro’s observation,  thinking that meant you should sit to the left of the biggest stacks,  or loosest and/or wildest players.  Caro had made the same mistake.  Their thinking was that you should sit to the left of players who have a lot of chips,  or put a lot of chips into the pot.  There are times when that’s true.  (And I’ll get to some of those times before I finish this series of articles.)  But it’s not a global truth,  there’s a lot of other things that need to be considered first.

The main problem with the idea is that the money flow Caro observed is caused by position relative to the betting order.  Players who act last  (clockwise betting order)  have an advantage over players in front of them.  But position rotates with each deal,  so your positional advantage is transitory and gets spread equally among all players.

To profit from the observation that money flows clockwise you need to become a sinkhole,  where the money stops flowing once it gets to your seat.  Picking a seat doesn’t make you a sinkhole,  where the rotation of the money stops.  You can become a sinkhole,  by playing your betting order position well,  but that’s not because of your seat relative to other players  --  it’s because playing well means being more careful from early position and more aggressive from late position.  You can achieve that no matter where you sit.

However,  with a careful choice of seat you can sometimes find an advantage that is uniquely yours for every deal.  This involves your position relative to certain other players and has nothing to do with the transitory positional advantage of the betting order. Of course,  those who attempt to apply Caro’s maxim of a clockwise money flow understand this,  but they tend

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There are two different kinds of advantages you can get from picking a good seat.  In some cases you can gain an information advantage,  in other cases you can gain a strategic advantage.

Information

Ideally,  before you have to make a decision about your own hand you'd like to have as much information as you can.  To get this information you prefer to have two kinds of players act before you:  loose players and aggressive players.  When other players act before you,  you gain information.  Even having a player fold gives you information,  but you gain even more information when a player calls  (loose player)  or raises  (aggressive player).  In other cases,  the strategic advantages you can get late in the hand from having a certain player on your left will overshadow an early information advantage you might get from having them on your right.

Isolation

Both Krieger and Adams give isolation as a reason to want to immediately follow a loose player.  The idea of isolation is that you can raise whenever a loose player gets into the pot and get heads up against the loose player.

Well,  that might work in some games.  Games that are both tight and populated with generally weak players.  But if you’re in that kind of game it’s hard to go wrong no matter where you’re sitting.

If you’re in a generally loose game you don’t really want to get heads up,  you want as many people putting money in the pot with very bad draws as you can get.  If you have a KTs you don’t want to get rid of those players who might call one bet with a T6o.

If you’re in a game that has any tough players at all,  they’ll quickly realize what you’re trying to do with your isolation raises and they’ll end up picking you off.

Isolation is a very overrated concept.