Advanced Position Play: Maximizing Later Positions & Early Ones

by Bodog Poker | Aug 23 2010

First of all, a refresher: when we discuss your position at the poker table, we are referring to your position in relation to the dealer button. The dealer is, obviously, in the most powerful position at the table because they act last in the betting rounds.  Second only to the cards themselves, position at the table is one of the single most important factors for any player to consider when playing a hand of poker.   Why is it such an advantage to play in the later positions?

First: you’ll get a grasp on the other players’ hand strengths (presuming that they’re not bluffing) and get a better idea of the relative merits of your hand.  For (an extreme) example, let’s say that you’re holding a pair of 6s and the person before you pushes all-in.  This allows you tonight reconsider your initial impulse to call or raise and even push you out of the hand entirely.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a strategic retreat from a hand, particularly if you can escape without even playing a blind.

Secondly: There are fewer players acting after you.  This makes it much less likely that you’ll face a raise or re-raise that could force you to spend money that you don’t want to.  For instance, if the player before you calls and you raise by a significant portion, they’re looking at a much steeper mental cost for these players to get in on a hand.  The same mentality helps you make decisions at the later positions can be used by you to push other players out of a pot.

Finally, you’ll continue to have a good position as the hand is played out, particularly if you’ve managed to get rid of those after you.  Even if you haven’t, though, your relative position gives you the ability to make critical decisions with more information and as everyone knows, information is key in poker.  In fact, one of the crucial arguments for poker acting as a game of skill is the way that players receive information from the rest of the board and decide what to do next.

That said, as great as the later positions are for the player, it’s possible to actually use the early positions in the game effectively in a manner very close to what’s described in the paragraph above. You’ll need to have cards that back up your actions. Face card pairs (KK, QQ, JJ) and high pairs like AA, TT and 99 are obvious contenders for this honor, but you can also think about effectively playing AQ and AK if you’re feeling spunky.

It’s not recommended that you attempt to bluff from early positions: you won’t have adequate information on what others are holding and while going all in and then smugly crossing your arms, waiting to see what others do can occasionally shake up a no limit Texas hold ‘em table in real life, online poker players are very different and tend to play strictly by the numbers outside of the higher-stakes tables.

| | |