Position

I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times already.  “Remember the importance of position.”  It gets old but unfortunately for those of you who are sick of hearing it, it’s incredibly important.  Position is so important because, even though the importance of position is ground into us every day, we still don’t realize how important it is!

This article is going to be a little on the basic side but I wrote it for a reason.  People still take position too lightly in poker.  The very best players, even the high stakes maniacs, know and revere the power of position.  It’s not just dumb luck that every single winning poker player makes the vast majority of his/her money from late position.  Think about that.  Every single poker player makes the vast majority of his/her money from late position.

Position is everything in poker.  If you learn how to properly use position to your advantage, you will get so much better at poker and you’ll be able to crush higher stakes than ever before.  Having position makes your job a million times easier.  You don’t even have to be very good at poker to win a lot of money if you’re good at using position.

If you don’t already have it, I strongly recommend you get yourself a copy of Holdem Manager.  This tool is incredibly important for any serious poker player.  It costs $55 but actually pays for itself.  By buying this program you are actually making money, not spending it.  I’m not just saying that to sell it – I have no financial interest in the program.  Just Google if it you want, you will see that this program is the standard for serious poker players.  If you don’t have it yet, get it.

Anyways, if you open up Holdem Manger, bring up your ring game statistics, and then look at your position statistics, you’ll see what I’m talking about.  I have an old 65,000 hand database to use as an example.  From the button I earned about $7,100 and from UTG (under the gun – the first guy after the blinds) I netted $336.  See what a huge difference that is?  My sample size isn’t the biggest – 65,000 hands may sound like a lot but it’s only a month’s worth of play or so – but it still shows that there is a tremendous gap between the earnings from being in position and being out of position.

What does this mean?  Well first of all, if you have Holdem Manager you’ll be amazed at the huge sums of money that you’ve made from late position.  You’ll also be amazed by the almost-as-huge sums of money that you’ve lost to the blinds and from being in early position.  If you could only reduce the money you lose from early position then you could increase the total amount you’ve won.  Ok, so what does that mean?  Just play extra tight from early position and you will make more money.

You don’t even have to do anything special.  Just tighten up when you are in early position.  That’s it!  Yes it is that simple and yes it is that easy.  You don’t have to get good at anything – just fold your hands when playing from poor position.

So do you think you’re playing tight from out of position?  Many people say they are but they actually aren’t.  For example, if you’re sitting in the BB with a pair of twos and the table folds to the button who raises, do you usually call here and hope for a set?  If so, you’re not playing your position correctly.

The button raise tells you nothing about his hand because people raise all kinds of junk on the button.  You’re only going to hit a set 1/8 times.  Of those few times you hit the set, how often is the button going to have a real hand?  Even if he has AA he’s not going to pay you off every time you hit a set.  The fact that the button has a wide range of hands and has position on you is going to make it very hard for you to ever get paid off the few times you hit a set.

Now on the other hand, if you’re the guy on the button and you have a pair of twos, you can raise it up and play some poker against the blinds.  They will have the disadvantages now and you can read their hands much easier.  You get to decide how the hand plays out because you’re the one who raised preflop and you’re the one who has position.

So what I recommend you do is to not worry about defending your blinds but instead concentrate on stealing them.  As you can see, I have a couple of articles on those topics already.

As you work on using position you can progress from the defensive stage to the offensive stage.  I consider playing extra tight from out of position and avoiding losing money defensive.  The offensive stage is when you start abusing people with your position.

What you want to do is get as good as you can at making people hate playing against you when you have position.  As you get better at this, your opponents will have a really hard time playing against you from out of position without having a strong hand.  When they do have strong hands, you can use your position to find out for cheaper than it is for them to figure out the times you have a strong hand.  That means you are going to run into extra profits.

There is a fine line between being a tough position player and being a bluff-monkey.  The tough position player is aware that different opponents can take different amounts of pressure before they either start calling down light or they start putting in extra raises.  Once the tough position player realizes his opponents have reached that point, he then switches to a wait-and-break mode where he stops messing with that particular player and instead waits for a big hand to break him.  If enough time goes by without that big hand, the tough position player can slowly get back into steal mode.

If you have position and want to abuse your opponents, you have all kinds of options.  First of all you can just call their bets on the flop with nothing and then steal it on the turn.  You can raise your draws on the flop as semi-bluffs.  You can just call with your draws on the flop.  You can even fold your draws if you want!  You can basically just lean on your opponents as much as you want and it’s hard for them to do anything about it.

Another way to use position is to carefully select where you sit at the poker table.  If at all possible, you want the craziest, loosest players on your right and the tightest, most predictable players on your left.

This is the best setup because it allows you to use your position the most effectively.  First of all, it’s very difficult to play against a maniac when he is seated to your left.  He will very often have position on you and make it very hard to play all but your best hands.  When you have position on the maniac, it becomes a lot easier for you to decide when the pot becomes big and when you will simply check behind.

Having the tight predictable people on your left makes it easier for you to play because they won’t be making all sorts of crazy, unexpected moves.  It’s also a lot easier to steal the blinds from tight predictable players.  If the crazy loose guy to your right is stealing your blinds, don’t worry about it – you can steal from the tight guy on your left.

The most important thing though is playing tight from out of position.  Don’t worry about trying to play marginal hands out of position in big pots.  Let your opponents spread their money around the table doing that.  You stay out of it.  I think it’s best to end with a quote from poker authority Ed Miller:

“Total all the dollars you’ve ever bet playing poker. The large majority of those dollars should have been bet from late position. Only a small percentage of your total handle should have been bet from up front.”