
“Hold’em is like love: position is everything.
In Texas Hold’em poker, it’s important to know your opponents’ playing style, but it’s also important to know your position. The table location is where you sit in relation to the dealer button. The three main positions at the poker table are early (big blind, small blind and under the ball), middle and late positions (including the cut and the button). The reason the dispenser button rotates after each hand is because of the importance of position.
The strength of the position is that prices move clockwise
. Playing in your strongest position, late position, you can see how other players react to their hands before they even come to you. Pokers (TM) “Position is strength” comes from this simple idea. While hole cards are critical, how you use position to choose your betting strategy is the most important tool in your poker skills. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to play your starting hands the same no matter what position you are in. Even if you understand the power of playing top-notch starting hands, getting every pot out of bad position comes at a cost. The more information you have, the higher your chances of winning the hand.
Your margin of error is smaller when you are in early position.
If you bet a marginal hand reflow from early position, it can be easily raised or even re-raised by players betting behind you. This puts you at a disadvantage as you have to quickly decide whether your hand is worth betting extra chips (two or three small limit bets, all in no limit) to see the flop. If you make the right move and fold, you will lose the chips you put into the pot. Therefore, if you are in early position, you should limit your hands in play to the best premium hands since you don’t know what the other players in the group are doing. Statistically, at least one of the players behind you also has a top-notch starting hand. Although the big and small blinds are in early position, they have an advantage in the 온라인홀덤 until the final flop.
When you play from middle position, you have players waiting to be traded and players who have played before. Even though your middle position hand selection reflow has increased, you are still limited to playing strong starting hands in most cases. Since there can be more than one player in the pot, you are more likely to have weaker hands, but you still risk more with players at the end.
Poker legend Doyle Brunson once said,
“If I had position with a player, I wouldn’t even have to look at my cards.” Being late with a good hand has great advantages over playing early with a good hand. A player in late position with a premium hand has the ability to manipulate the size of the pot, making it easy to find future bets on a spin or river. Late position is especially important when playing marginal hands such as regular binders or weak aces. By seeing what your opponents are doing before you act, you can expand your starting range and often play weaker hands from late position. Ignoring position when playing a hand gives an advantage to players who understand its meaning.
Since the button is the strongest opening position, many players try to bluff or bet weak hands from this position. Knowing other players’ styles will help you determine if they are multi-handed or have a really strong hand. It also gives you an idea of how much you need to protect your own blinds.