The Advantage of Position in Poker
It is important to consider your position at a poker table when determining the proper course of action to take through a hand. If you are in position in a given hand, your opponent will be forced to act first at the beginning of each betting round.
This will give you the opportunity to gain information from your opponent’s actions before you decide what to do. When your opponent is out of position, he will have to act without knowing what you are going to do. These factors give the player who is in position several advantages throughout the hand.
Against an opponent who bets when he has a good hand and checks when he doesn’t, it is ideal to be in position. If these tendencies held true at all times, you would be able to win every pot in which your opponent does not have a good hand. You could simply bet every time that your opponent checked to you. On occasions where your opponent does have a strong hand, you will have fair warning of this before you put any more money into the pot. This is because he will just bet into you and give you the opportunity to fold your hand.
A skilled player can also cause their opponent to make crucial mistakes by utilizing their position at the table. If you have convinced your opponent that you are going to bet, you may gain the opportunity to take a free card when you are holding a drawing hand.
For example, if you have been frequently bluffing against a certain player, he will likely show weakness to try to induce a bluff when he has a quality hand. If you are aware of this, you can just check behind the other player and you will get to see another card for free. In doing this, you are taking advantage of the adjustments that your opponent has made due to your previous aggression.
There are many cases where your opponent surely would have made a bet himself if he knew that you had a drawing hand. The advantage of being in position becomes obvious if you consider what would have likely happened if the table positions were reversed in this scenario. If you check to your opponent, he would know that in order to charge you the correct price to see another card, he would have to do the betting himself. In this case, you would have to put more money into the pot to improve your hand.
Position can also play a key role in hands where your opponent is drawing to a straight or flush.
Anytime that an opponent calls 2 bets from out of position on a draw-heavy board, you must consider the possibility that he may have been drawing. If this was not the case, it is likely that your opponent may have thought that you were drawing and this was his primary reason for calling your bets. In either scenario, when the river card completes the possible draws that your opponent could have had, there are very few reasons to continue betting. An opponent who was drawing now has you beat, and an opponent who thought that you were drawing will probably not call another bet.
In this scenario, if you are in position when your opponent completes his draw, you will often be able to escape from the hand without putting more money into the pot. If your opponent wishes to win any additional money after he completes his draw, he will have to do the betting himself. This should be a tell tale sign to an experienced player that their opponent has completed their hand and they should fold.
If you were to play this same hand from out of position, you would have gained a significantly smaller amount of information throughout the hand. It will be harder to determine why the other player was betting and this would usually result in you losing more money on the occasions where you are outdrawn. For this reason, players tend to lose more money when they are out of position.
Related posts:
- Pressing a Small Edge
- Biggest Mistakes in Micro Stakes Poker
- Controlling the Pot Size From Early Position
- Full Steam Ahead
- My Aces Cracked
Categories: Poker Strategy
