Holdem is a Game of Position
In poker, position would refer to when a player would have to act on his hand relative to the other players in the pot
. When a player would be one of the first to act, he would be in early position. When a poker player would be last or nearly last, he would be in a late position. Likewise, poker players with several rivals on either side of them would be in middle position. These phrases will appear regularly in this book, which will give a clue about the implication of considering position in your holdem judgments.
Late Position Advantage
As you start to play holdem poker, you will quickly become aware of the several benefits of having late position in a hand.
One of the most important benefits would be that you would generally have a decent idea of what kind of strength you would be up against. For instance, suppose you were holding a pair of eights. This would like a good hand, and in absolute terms, it would be just that. It would not be, however, a great hand, and it would often be unclear how (or whether) to continue with it.
If you were to be in late position with your pocket eights, the actions of the other poker players would control how you play. Suppose everyone were to fold to you, and you were to have the best hand, so you would have to opt to play it aggressively by raising the pot. Assuming the blinds were to call your raise, you would now hold a positional advantage over them for the rest of the hand. This would mean that on the flop, turne, and river, they would have to act before you, giving you the advantage of making your decisions with more information about your opponents’ cards than they would have about yours.
Looking at a different picture in which you hold a pair of eights in late position. This time, however, a tight poker player would have raised and an even tighter one would have re-raised before the action would reach you. Once again, the helpful information gained due to your positional advantage could be used. Undoubtedly, your pair of eights would not be the best hand here, and this awareness, combined with the high price of entering the pot, would allow you to safely fold your hand.
Early position Disadvantage
This could be compared with holding the same hand in early position. Poker has been a game of incomplete data. Now, you would not have the benefit of knowing what your rivals were going to do. You would have to make a badly informed judgment, and in poker these kinds of judgments would often be wrong. In the case of the pair of eights, sometimes it would be the best hand (or at least playable), and other times it would be way behind. hence, the earlier your position, the less liable you would be to know which one would be the case.
But in holdem poker, the problems with early position wouldn’t stop there. Once you were to choose to enter a pot by opening early (or were to decide to look at the flop from a blind position), you would act before your middle and late position rivals for the rest of the hand. This would cost you, in terms of both bets and pots. Because you would have to act first, you would at times be uncertain as to whether a card would aid your rivals’ hands. For instance, you might check, when the truth is would you have bet your hand one or more rivals might have called with poor hands. Your bad position would have cost you one or more bets in this case.
Worse yet, your trepidation about whether the development of the board would have aided your opponents might cause you to check, when betting would have had persuaded everyone else to fold. Now, suppose everyone were to check behind you, and the next card would come. A rival who had folded for a bet on the earlier betting round had now improved his hand and won the pot. For instance, suppose you were first to act with a pair of eights, and the flop was a king, nine, and seven.
If you were first, with three or four poker players behind you, you would have probably opted (correctly) to check, as this flop would be possible have helped one or more of your rivals. Still, suppose nobody could beat your pair of eights, and the hand would get checked around. Now, an ace was to come, it would give of your rivals holding an ace and five a better hand. Since this poker player would perhaps fold on the flop if you were to bet, your check would have cost you the pot. If you were to have the same hand in last position, though, it would be correct for you to bet the flop once it would be checked around to you, likely making you the winner of the pot.
Playing Position
Obviously, it would be to your advantage to try to play most of your hands from late position. Consequently, you would have to enter the pot only with premium hands when you would be one of the first poker players to act. When you have been playing only big pairs and big cards such as an ace and king from early position, your postflop positional drawback has been partly offset by your hand being quite easy to play after the flop.
If you had a big pair, you would have stayed aggressive on the flop in nearly all cases (the main exception having been when your pair was smaller than aces, an ace had flopped, and several poker players were in the pot). If you had big cards, such as an ace and king, you would have tended to bet when you would have flopped a pair, and checked when you hadn’t tempered by much guesswork; thus, postflop performance would not have suffered as much from poor position as more minor holding like small and middle pairs in holdem poker.
The value of position should not be taken too lightly. It would have to be considered every decision you make in the game.