Winning Texas Hold’em – The Power of Position

One of the least utilized (for beginning players) and yet most important factors to think about when playing Texas Hold’em is table position. Your table position in hold’em is your location at the table in relation to the button. Your position rotates every hand with the button, so it’s important to know how to play them all. Your table position will be a huge factor on how you play your hands, and whether or not to play a hand at all.

There are four basic positions in Hold’em: Late position, middle position, early position and the blinds. The blinds are often lumped in with “early position”, but since they are played a little differently, I gave them their own category. The following guidelines are just that – guidelines. There are many more factors to consider when playing Hold’em, but you should always default to the following rules. Here are the four positions and how they relate to your game play:

In Hold’em, early position describes the two seats just left of the big blind.  Do not play garbage hands here.  If you have a premium hand, you can play it, but no junk. Nobody else at the table has to do anything until they see you act, and that puts you at a huge disadvantage. Also, the fact that there are so many players after you makes it fairly likely that someone else has a big hand that you do not want to be playing against. If you have a big, made hand, like AA, KK, or QQ, go ahead and raise the action. With premium drawing hand, like AK or AQ, it may be a better idea to limp in, see if someone else raises, and then re-raise them and try to take the pot down there. When you see a flop from EP, you should bet the flop about 75% of the time, whether you hit or not.

The two seats to the left of the EP players is considered middle position. In Hold’em, middle position should be played with most of the same strategy as EP. You can play a few hands in MP that you wouldn’t touch in EP, but be careful! If you find yourself in a hand with JJ and the flop comes AhQh6s, it’s time to toss your hand. Watch out for the EP players. A pre-flop raise or limp from someone in early position could mean you are up against a monster.

Late position in Hold’em is the button and player to his immediate right. Being in late position has a huge advantage over everyone else, in that they are allowed to see what everyone else does before they have to do anything. This basically gives them a license to steal. The button and the cut-off get to see the action and decide whether or not they want any part of it. They have the freedom to raise the blinds at will and see flops with all kinds of speculative hands, because they have the advantage of great position. Go ahead and raise the blinds with 88 or suited 89. Then just outplay any callers after the flop. Yes, you will be up against winning hands sometimes that people won’t want to lay down, but you position gives you a better chance of spotting when that is and getting out of the hand before it gets ugly.

The blinds can be one of the hardest positions to play correctly. You get to be the last to act before the flop, but after the flop you are the very first. The problem is that (especially with the big blind) you often have pot odds to call raises. I recommend doing one of three things when you are playing Hold’em in the blinds. Either fold, take the pot down pre-flop, or call with your favorable pot odds and either check/fold the flop or take the pot down right there. Unless you have a monster hand, I never recommend the blinds all the way to a showdown.

Texas Hold’em is really all about position. Have a little patience and play according to your position and you can be a winner at the Hold’em table.  Good luck!

For a more in depth look at Hold’em position, check out Steve Schafer’s How to Win at Online Hold’em site.

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