We’ve also learned -- at least I hope you’ve learned -- about the strategic importance of being a fun and easygoing sort of person at the table.  It helps you to have people who are not agitated, angry, or unduly somber and serious at the table.  Carefree, happy, laughing people are more likely to part easily with their money.

But it’s also important, as I’ll explain in this article, to think about your table demeanor relative to your position.  In other words, you want to treat different people differently based on where they are sitting relative to you at the poker table.  That may sound a little nuts, but hear me out and I think that by the end of this essay you’ll agree with me.

Have you ever read about the importance of getting the right seat at the poker table -- how you want to have certain types of players to your right and other types of players to your left?  If you missed that lesson, simply put, it’s that it’s generally to your advantage to have loose or aggressive players to your right -- while passive and tight players are better off, most of the time at least, on your left.  The reason for this is, broadly speaking, that you want to have first go at the loose players, to try and isolate them with raises or bets that make it expensive for other opponents to enter the pot.  And you want to have the benefit of seeing what the strong aggressive players do before you commit your money to the pot.  You want the passive and tight players after you because neither will offer you much of a fight.  So you don’t mind entering before they act -- since they will rarely be either betting or raising when

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The same sort of logic applies to how you treat your opponents in a game.

Think about this.  If you had the ability to stop one player from raising you the whole game, whom would you pick?  Would it be the player who acted before you acted, or the player who acted immediately after you did?  Think about it for a few seconds.  Got the answer yet?  Good.

The correct answer is that if you could pick one player who would never raise it would be the player immediately after you.  You’d prefer it if he played you softly, since he is the first player to go after you enter the pot.  He is the one who has first shot at you.  If the player to your right raises, you always have the ability to fold right away.  But if the player immediately after you raises then you will always have to decide whether to enter a pot with the risk that he will make it two bets if you decide to play.  That’s not good.

We all know that soft-playing someone because he is a friend is against the rules.  If, for example, you have two Aces and your buddy on your right has two Kings and you decide to check it down because you’re friends, it’s called collusion and it is grounds for getting kicked out of the card room.  You knew that, didn’t you?

Well, even so, it happens all the time.  Maybe it happens deliberately.  But even if it doesn’t, friends often casually just play more softly against their friends.  They check when they might otherwise bet; and they call when they might otherwise raise.  It’s human nature not to be as tough on our friends as we are on our enemies.

That being said, what can you do at the table that helps you in this regard?  Make friends with the guy on your left.  Be charming.  Make an effort to engage him in conversation.  Listen to his stories; compliment him on his watch or his tie or his cardplay.  I’m not saying you have to kiss his ass, but go ahead and kiss his ass.  It may not make him your buddy, but it may get him to be less inclined to play the same tough game against you as he does against the rest of the field.

What about the other players?  Does it make sense to be charming with them too?  Sure it does!  You’d like them all to be less inclined to raise you or otherwise take shots at you when you’d prefer to just call along, or check along, and see another card for free or cheaply.  But it’s not so important to be this way with them as it is to be charming to the player on your left.

As a practical matter, it’s much easier and simpler to pick one person at the table to befriend.  It happens naturally anyway.  You’ve seen this I’m sure.  People are very tribal.  Games develop where one end of the table feels slighted that none of them has won a pot for a while.  Alliances develop -- unspoken though they may be -- between a couple of players sitting next to each other.  We tend to seek out allies when we are in competition within a group.

Exploit this natural tendency by making sure that you pay attention to this player on your left.  That doesn’t mean you have to be mean or ignore everyone else.  Hey, if you can get them happy and make them friendly, more power to you.  But it takes some energy to show a genuine interest in someone.  And that energy is best spent on the person to your left.