No Limit Holdem 101: Position (In Application)

This is intended to be a series of articles about playing on-line no limit holdem cash games. There will be times where I venture into live poker and times where I venture into SNGs, MTTs, Satellites, and games other than no limit holdem, but for the most part this will target no limit holdem cash games.

For the 9th installment of this series, I’ll talk about position in poker - how should it affect your play and how to take advantage of it.

In the last article we discussed the definition of position and the identifiers of position (early, late, middle, etc.).

In this article we will spend some time talking about how to use position to adjust (or even determine) your play to your greatest advantage.
Let me start by saying that while position is an important concept in poker, it is not the be-all end-all of determining your play and your success. Some players believe that position is a magic bullet and they should win every hand when in position. The reality of poker is that while position can be used to leverage play and help you win a hand, position is more often used to gather information for making the correct play which can easily be that you are behind and should fold your hand.

Ask the top poker players about the hand they feel they played the best and they will almost exclusively tell about a big laydown they made. I will deal with the concept of the big laydown in a future article. I bring the concept up at this point to reinforce that poker is about decision making. You are striving to make the correct decision while trying to get your opponent to make the wrong decision.

Well enough of the preachy stuff. Let’s deal with the first application of position and that is starting hand selection. The only thing you know before any hand begins is where you sit at the table and how many players will be left to act after you act. Your position at the table allows you to collect information and the less information you have the tighter your play should be. Acting in early position you should primarily only open play with premium hands. As your position becomes later, you should be willing to open play with more and more hands.

Let me draw out an example for you. You are under the gun with KQo at a standard 9-handed table with all players seated. KQ is not a horrible hand, but pre-flop it is behind any pocket pair, behind any ace, and dominated by AK. With 8 players left to act, this should be an easy fold.

Now change nothing except your position. You are now seated on the button. Action has folded to you and you have KQo. You now have a hand in a position where you should consider opening the pot. I say consider as opposed to certainly opening here because you also need to take into account your opponents and the recent play at the table. Given a lack of any more information than the fact that 6 players have folded, this hand in this position would be worth an opening raise. You will be last to act after the flop should either of your opponents call, and you will be able to gather additional information before having to commit more chips to the pot.

Now let’s change this scenario up one more time. You again have KQo on the button, but in this case the player “Under the Gun” (UTG) has opened for a raise of 3 big blinds.

This is where you see the value of position come into play. You have been able to collect the information that the player acting first (in the worst possible position) thinks he has a hand worth playing and raising from his position. It is hard to imagine an opponent raising form UTG and not being ahead of KQo at this point.

As you can see position is but one factor in determining your play. We will get more into reading and categorizing opponents in future articles but utilizing position, the information gathered from your opponents, and your reads on your opponents should be the basis of every decision you make in poker.

Now let’s deal with position as it applies to post-flop play.

When playing post-flop you are either in position versus your opponents (will be last player to have initial action post-flop), out of position versus you opponents (will be first player to have initial action post-flop), or in middle position if there were more than 2 players to see the flop.

In addition to your position versus your opponents you will have the pre-flop action to base your decisions on. Where you the aggressor pre-flop or was your opponent the aggressor?

Let’s say you were on the button pre-flop. One middle position opponent called the big blind. You then raised to 4 times the big blind. The opponent who limped from middle position calls your bet.

On the flop your opponent checks to you.

A big part of any decision should be your read on your opponent. But for the purposes of this, we will say that you’ve never played this person before and this is one of the first hands you’ve seen this opponent play and you have no particular read on this opponent.

But you do have the following information:
• Your opponent limped pre-flop showing no particular strength
• Your opponent just called your bet pre-flop again showing no particular strength.
• Your opponent checked on the flop again showing no particular strength


You can start to narrow down the strength of your opponents hand. Either:
• He has nothing as he has shown no strength
• He is slow playing a big pre-flop hand
• He is a calling station and will call pretty much anything

Now you will need to have more information than one hand to successfully profile your opponent (and we will get into more detail on profiling later), but you are now in a position to use your position to get more information.

You will notice that I haven’t even mentioned the cards you are holding or the cards on the flop. They are not important to this discussion. This discussion is about using position not about your hand strength.

The best thing to do here is to bet into the pot. By betting you will either take down the pot right now, or you will extract additional information from your opponent.

If you were to bet ½ pot here and your opponent were to reraise, then you should probably fold. Again, you have no particular read on your opponent and putting him on a check-raise bluff without a read is a prescription for disaster. If your opponent should call here, then you will be faced with another decision on the turn.

But let’s take the same scenario and change up your position. You are now in big blind. A single mid position opponent limps into the pot. The action folds to you, you raise to 4 times the big blind and your opponent calls that bet. This is very similar to the above situation.

Here’s the big difference. On the flop you will have to act first. On the flop you will get no additional information from your opponent before you have to act. You will have to place that ½ pot bet and try to take down the pot before your opponent has shown post-flop passivity or aggression.

As you have probably determined by now, it is very difficult to separate one poker component from another. It is hard to play you position without profiling your opponent, observe betting patterns, or in general collecting information.
I highly recommend rereading each of these articles after you’ve read the next article. You will start to see how it all comes together into an overall concept and style of play.

The key factor for this article is that position matters. Playing out of position exposes you to having to commit more chips to the pot to get information you can get for free when playing in position.

Well that’s it for position in application.

In the next installment we will talk about the value of aggression – putting your opponents to the test.