Poker Strategy: In Poker, Position is Everything
Everyone has heard the rants about position being everything in Poker, especially in games with a Small Blind and a Big Blind. It is talked about in Poker Books, on Television, and in articles and forums all across the internet. Because of this, a lot of players seem to THINK they understand this seemingly simple concept, and many have no clue how important the idea of position really is to Poker strategy.
Your average, everyday player may have heard of position, and know what it is, but a good portion do not understand the concept to the extent it can be used. I have played in a monthly game with the same guys for the past five years, and all of them talk about it, but few actually understand it. Very few average players also know that the value of position decreases significantly as stack-size in relation to the blinds decreases. This is because of the chance that all the money will go to the middle either pre-flop or on the flop.
I thought I fully understood the concept of position until I took a couple of lessons with Poker Pro Bill Seymour over at www.pokercoaching.com (I will discuss this and other coaching services in future articles).
I started to realize that position doesn’t only mean the spot that you are sitting in relative to the button. Position has to to with where you sit with relation to the opponents still in the hand. It can be used throughout the hand to buy a free card by raising on the flop so everyone checks to you on the turn. This allows you bet or take a free river card. It can be used for a well-timed bluff when your opponents have checked and you feel that no one has much of anything.
Phil Gordon has an amazing lesson on position in his “Little Green Book“. It takes you through his thinking processes and how he always wants to be in position whenever possible when playing a hand.
This is why hands like 67s and JTs should primarily be played in late position in a tournament. If you limp in with these hands in early or middle position (EP or MP), and it gets raised you are just BURNING UP CHIPS. That’s why these hands are called chip-burners. If you call the raise, you are putting yourself in worse shape by taking what is probably going to be a heads-up flop, out of position, with a drawing hand. If yuo flop a draw how do you play it? If you bet, you may get raised off of your draw. If you check, any good player is going to bet enough to make it incorrect for you to call. Even if you do call and hit your draw on the turn, a good player is not even going to pay you off. If you call a flop bet and miss your draw on the turn, chances are you will be facing another sizable bet which you may or may not have odds to call.
The problem is that in Tournament Poker, even if you are getting correct odds to call a bet with a draw, you run the risk of the draw not coming in, resulting in a shorter chip stack for you. This is why position is so important. You get to see what your opponents do before you have to act, giving you as much information as possible before making any decisions.
Try this: Try playing a couple of $1 tournaments with tape over your hole cards on the screen. Try and make the best moves you can without having to look at your cards. Play your position, your opponents, and situations. I guarantee that after a few exercises doing this, your game will have improved. After 100 of them your game will have improved significantly. Let us know what happened in the Poker-Speak.com Forum
