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2.3 Poker Position Concept
What is Poker Position?
The first concept that we are going to show you is the Poker Position Concept. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of Poker, and it’s very important that you understand this before you move on.
Position refers to where you are seated on the table in relation to the dealer button. Play always goes clockwise so the position you are in determines what order players act in, which has a big effect on the decisions we make.
We split the table into 4 positions, Early Position, Mid Position, Late Position and the Blinds.
Poker Position on a 10 man table
Early Position – The 3 seats to the left of the Blinds, these are the first people to act after the cards have been dealt.
Mid Position – the next 2 people after the Early Positions
Late Position – The last 3 people (the last person being the player with the dealer button)
Blinds – The players who put in the small and big blind, these are the two players to the left of the dealer button.
The best position to be in is Late position. – The reason for this is that we get to see everybody act before we have to make our decisions. This means we have more information in order to make the correct decision.
Also the later we act the less people there are to act after us, so therefore less chance that a person still to act after us is holding a strong hand.
Illustration
You have a marginal hand 3-3 and are in late position, you may be considering playing, but if a player in Early Position raises, then you will more than likely fold your hand.
Compare this to holding the same hand in Early position, you have now got to make the decision on whether to play or not before you see other peoples actions, which could lead to you putting chips in to play the hand and a player in later position raising and forcing you to fold your hand.
Can you see the difference – in both situations you have folded your hand, but when in late position you have done so without committing any chips into the pot, whereas in Early position it has cost you to fold your hand.
How to play Positions
It is for the reason outlined above that we prefer to play in a late position. You will see from the starting hands that you learn later in this module that we play a lot more Starting hands from a late position, and only play the strongest hands from early position.
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