Poker

In Texas Hold’em, a player’s table position is one of the most important elements of developing a winning game. A player’s position in Hold’em is where he/she is seated relative to the player on the “button”. Your position is vital when deciding how (or if) you should play a hand. Despite its importance, position strategies are surprisingly underutilized by most novice Hold’em players.

In Texas Hold’em, there are essentially four positions. They are the blinds (BB and SB), early position (EP), middle position (MP), and late position (LP). I gave the blinds their own category because the strategy for playing them is a little different. Understand that the tips below are general, in that they do not account for other game play circumstances. In general, though, following them will help your Hold’em game quite a bit. Let’s look at how your table position affect you game:

In Hold’em, early position describes the two seats just left of the big blind.Do not play garbage hands here. If you have a premium hand, you can play it, but no junk. Nobody else at the table has to do anything until they see you act, and that puts you at a huge disadvantage. Also, the fact that there are so many players after you makes it fairly likely that someone else has a big hand that you do not want to be playing against. If you have a big, made hand, like AA, KK, or QQ, go ahead and raise the action. With premium drawing hand, like AK or AQ, it may be a better idea to limp in, see if someone else raises, and then re-raise them and try to take the pot down there. When you see a flop from EP, you should bet the flop about 75% of the time, whether you hit or not.

Middle position in Hold’em describes the next two players to act after EP. MP is played a lot like EP, except that you can open up your starting hand selection just a little. Add JJ and suited AJ to the mix here, but be prepared to bow out if things get scary. If an EP player raises, you should fold all but premium hands. If an EP player limps, be careful. He could easily be limping with AK or AQ.

Late position defines the last two players to act. The Button is the last player to act before the blinds pre-flop and the last to act on all the subsequent rounds. In Hold’em, the button gets to dictate the action. You can open your game way up to include just about any two cards that have a good chance of connecting on the flop. You still need to be mindful of the action in front of you, but if there is none, you can raise with all kinds of hands like KQ suited, A-10 suited, 99, etc. If it is folded to you on the button (or in the cut-off, for that matter) you should be raising at least 75% of the time, no matter what cards you have. Since you get to see the other players act before you do, anyone who calls your raise will be at a disadvantage post flop.

The blinds can be really really tough to play correctly, and a lot of novice players don’t. As a rule of thumb, I would say to take down the pot pre-flop or drop your hand like a rock. It’s true that you have odds to call many raises from the big blind, but the disadvantage of your position post flop is not usually worth the effort (or the chips). Unless you have a monster, I say let it go.