[cpk]

So what circumstances are you looking for in Hold'em? You make money when other players make mistakes, so you want to be in as many hands as possible with players who make a lot of mistakes. How do you know when a bad player will be in a hand? By sitting on his left. At a ten-handed table, you act after your right-hand neighbor 90% of the time. Nine times out of ten, when you're evaluating a preflop play with a marginal hand, you know whether you'll have this donator to take money from. Your relative position is a big advantage. If you were sitting on his right, you'd never know if he was coming in or not. This advantage holds to a lesser degree for the players two or three or four seats away.

This is wrong. You already know whether or not a bad player will be in a hand--well, they're in the game, aren't they? Further, your most profitable situations are when several LP-Ps limp in and you can raise on the button or cutoff with a hand that is normally marginal (eg, A7s). By definition, you are on everyone's relative left when you're on the button except for the two blinds--and if you know they're loose and weak, you know that jacking up their blinds will only invite them in, and you have position on every subsequent round.

What I'm saying is that for loose, weak players, position does not matter. You know that they will not raise, so you can limp in up front with weaker hands. You will have position on the button anyway, and the blinds will call a raise.

You're even more wrong about putting TA-As to your left. Say you're in a game with 8 fish and 1 TA-A. If the TA-A is to your immediate left, you will have to fold hands like 33, A7s, and the like that you could easily play if he were not sitting there. To me, this is a much bigger disadvantage that massively outweighs getting the button more often. I'm not terribly concerned if a loose, weak player who rarely gives action sits behind me on the button when I'm in the cutoff. I am a lot more concerned about having to muck JTs because I worry about getting isolated by an 18/8 who raises just often enough to keep me guessing.

Further, it is far more important to play tighter when a tougher player is in the pot than it is to play looser when a weak player is in the pot. The reason is that in the latter instance you can end up costing yourself a lot of money with little to be gained. And, besides, putting the TAPs to your left is not how to make your marginal hands more profitable in early position! Finally, if you sit on the toughest player's immediate left, you will not even have to worry about blind defense--I'm not usually concerned about tough players stealing my small blind (especially in 3/6 or 5/10, where the SB is rarely worth playing even in an unraised pot).

I think you make a couple of interesting points, but you're emphasizing the wrong variables. It's a lot worse to get raised by the TAP to your left with a marginal hand than to safely limp in or raise after the TAPs have folded and get no play.