Seat Labels on a 9 man table?

Which seats do you consider early, middle and late on a 9 man table?

I was thinking :

sB, bB, early, early, early, middle, middle, late, late

Any comments?

What if it drops down to 8 or 7 players?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

No. When losing players, drop the "early" lables first. So 8 handed would be SB, BB, EP, MP1, MP2, MP3, CO, Button. 7-handed, there is no "early position."

[AKQJ10]

Generally it makes more sense to "delete" from the front, e.g. if you consider there to be 4 EP with ten seats, then with nine it makes sense that there would be three EP. Obviously you're still going to use terms like UTG and UTG+1, but in essence it's the under-the-gun player ten handed whose seat got removed.

I'm not a fan of dogma in any event, though. They're just names.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I'm not a fan of dogma in any event, though.

But its not dogma if he's assigning positional names to choose starting hands. Since the logic behind which hands to play in which positions is grounded in how many players are left to act after you, the way he has them listed will result in sub-optimal preflop choices from certain positions.

Thanks for the replies guys. I've been reading SSHE and the starting hands (training wheels) tables are grouped into early (first 3), middle (next 3), late (co and button) and blinds.

I'm just trying to think about which guidelines to use in each position, especially during a 1/2 seat player drop / replacement.

[AKQJ10]

"[T]he logic behind which hands to play in which positions is grounded in how many players are left to act after you...." -- Hence we both agree that dropping from the front is correct.

As for dogma, I agree it's not dogma if he's comparing some particular starting hand recommendations and trying to ensure that he and the recommender are speaking the same language. I'm just saying, it's silly to debate whether MP1 could be called EP2 or what have you, when it obviously has characteristics of both early and middle position.

Your position names are the closest to a de facto standard, probably in part because of the Hand Converter. But AFAIK there's no guarantee that, say, someone from RGP or some arbitrary book would use precisely the same terminology.

[AKQJ10]

It might be helpful to think about it in terms of distance from the button. Given what you've posted about Ed's recommendations (I don't have SSHE handy), MP would be 2, 3, or 4 to the right of the button, regardless of how many players are away from the table.

thanks, i think that's a good way to approach it.

dropping form the front isn't something that i thought of right away, but after thinking about it i think it's a good way to do it.

Thanks,

G.

Interesting question. SSHE advocates deleting from the front (in a 9 man game you place a "phantom" 10th player UTG and assume he folded, so in a 7 man game if you are immediately to the left of the blinds you are opening in MP1 after 3 "phantom" folds). This is supported by Ed's "bunching" articles which lead to the conclusion that there is in fact little or no difference between a 10 handed game with UTG-UTG+2 folding and a 7 handed game.

On the other hand King Yao advocates a slightly different approach. I don't remember the details off hand, but he loses something like an MP first then an EP and somewhere along the line an LP. He doesn't explain why.

Although the Yao approach seems logical at first glance and looks balanced in terms of EP/MP/LP, the SSHE approach is more compelling. As previously mentioned by someone else, the EP/MP and LP labels are primarily to define where you are in relation to the button. If you are 4 off the button in a 7 handed game you are first to act, but it makes more sense to consider MP opening hands rather than the tighter EP opening hands because the only reason for having tighter EP opening standards is to take into account the larger number of players yet to act.

[Songwind]

The "delete from the front" method of thinking of position has been working for me in terms of hand selection and aggression. I think that if you kept it balanced, you would end up playing too tightly in the EP seats.