Position and Poker

Playing in position is one of the fundamental concepts that you have to come to grips with if you want to consider yourself at least a decent player. Most poker professionals will tell you that position is one of the most important concepts, if not the most important concept in poker. Position can be the difference in wheter you win or lose a little or a lot. One of the reasons behind this is because position plays a significant role in your ability to bluff. Bluffing becomes easier as you play from later positions. There are three positions you can be in on the poker table; early, middle or late position.
Early position means you are one of the first people to act in each round of betting. This is ascertained by where the dealer is, commonly known as the button. To the left of the button is the small and big blind. These two positions act last preflop, but on the flop, turn and river they are the first to act. The person on the left of the big blind is the first to act preflop; this position is commonly known as ‘under the gun’. The player on the left of this player is also considered being in early position.

To better understand why you don’t want to be in early position you must look at how a hand plays out on a table. When you are in early position you are at a great disadvantage because of the lack of information available to you. It is hard to bet or raise with medium strength hands because of the action that may happen after your turn. If you decide to bet and you get raised and reraised you have a difficult decision to make if you have already bet a significant portion of your chips. Poker is all about making decisions and playing so you make the least amount of difficult decisions as possible. Playing average hands out of position gives you unnecessary difficult decisions to make. Be aware of the hands that you are playing in early position and play accordingly. You can also use other player’s position to get a better read on the type of hands that they can have. As you limit the hands that you play from early position it is time to think about the sorts of hands to play from middle position.

Middle position, as the name suggests is when you act in neither early nor later position. There are players to act before and after you who give you more of an idea on what hands you are up against. Playing from middle position allows you to play your standard game without having to worry too much about the people behind you. Depending on who is involved in the hand will determine if you are in a good position or not. Overall though, there are positives and negatives of playing from this position, you have to be smart about it and think about how the hand is playing out. As you learn to play from later positions you will realise the benefits that this provides.

Later position is the prime position on the poker table and this is where you want to play a large percentage of your hands from. Late position generally refers to the player sitting on the button and the player on their right. The player on the right is known as the ‘cut off’ position. These two positions give you the luxury of getting all the information from the players that have acted before you. You have a much better chance of making the correct decisions with this information and you won’t throw away valuable chips or cash. You also have the added luxury of acting after everyone else on the flop, turn and river. This allows you to get a better read on the hand as well as giving you the chance to extract the most out of your opponent. They will have to deal with the discomfort of not having a great read on you while you can play the hand how you want and on your own terms. Play correctly from late position and you will reap the benefits.

As you grow in experience you will begin to understand how important position really is in poker. If you aren’t thinking about your position at the table I can’t stress enough the need to do so in the future. You want to make the most amount of correct decisions as you can, playing from later positions gives you a much better chance of being able to achieve this. Start to think about table dynamics like this and you will see a difference in your overall performance.