In the Great Dalmuti, should I be attempting to improve my seat position or shoot for the win?
The two big tricks to figuring out when you can go out are counting cards and figuring out how your cards will play. 

What's in your hand?

Figure out where your "losers" are in your hand - sets where you will be unable to take control: middle triples, pairs, singletons, etc. where you have no high set to establish control. These are the cards that you play dead last. It's possible to have two losers in the same number, e.g. a pair of 12s and a pair of 11s (with no other pairs to take control after you've played those). Similarly, determine if you have any "winners" - card combinations that you think nobody can beat (a triple in threes or fours, a pair of twos or threes, etc.). Finally, look at your hand and see how many middle-rank sets you have - cards you can slip into somebody else's play, or that you can slip into the middle of your own plays as you're going out.

Note that the definition of "winners," "losers," and "middle sets" will change as cards are played; your triple seven starts as a middle set, but as you see the sixes, fives, fours, and threes get played, they will become a winner. I usually keep track of all of the cards rank six or better as they're played, but if your memory is better than mine, you'll keep track of every card played, along with good guesses of who can hold the remaining cards. (It's usually a bad idea to split a set of cards into multiple smaller sets, so if somebody plays a single six, they're almost certainly out of sixes.)

A good enough hand

You can go out when you have:


At most one loser (which you'll play last)
Middle sets that you can slip in before playing your winners for that set

Ideally, have some powerful middle sets: they may not be winners, but nobody wants to expend their own winners to top them yet.

Enough winners to get all of your middle sets out
Luck: that your winners actually are winners, or that the other players don't care to top them at the moment you play them.


When all's said and done, the distribution of the cards between other players will make or break your attempt to go out. If the cards went weird, or some player tops your triple twelve with a triple nine (preventing you from playing your own triple nine that's a middle set for you), or someone topped your triple three with a triple one when all you have left is your last loser, then all you can do is pick up the pieces and hope next round will go better.

Going from the bottom to the top

Jumping from a low position to a high one takes a very lucky hand, and other players that don't care enough to play their high cards early on. As Hackworth says, it takes some large sets of cards, and the ability to gain control. Your "winners" are sets that are 4+ cards apiece, and you have more than one of them. You take control (while hoping against hope that nobody is willing to top your pitiful pair of sixes!), lay down your monster sets, and take your crown.