| Your position on the table is in reality
how many people are to act before you or after you in the betting. |
 |
| Early Position |
| If you are in early position, you must have
a very strong hand to play before and after the flop. The reason
is that there are always going to be players left to go after
you and they may have a stronger hand than you. It will have
always cost you money to find this out though. |
| For example, if you call $20 with an average
hand in early position and then someone left to act raise you
to $80, what are you going to do? You only have an average hand
and you have just lost $20 for nothing. If you decided to call
the raise, you would be compounding your first mistake of calling
in early position with an average hand. |
| Middle Position |
| In middle position, you still must play very
strong hands, but you can loosen up your requirements ever so
slightly. This is because, the less players left to bet after
you have acted, the less likelihood that someone has a stronger
hand than you. We repeat, you must still have a strong hand,
but not AS strong as the hand you need to play in the early
seats. |
| Late Position |
| In late position, you will be one of the
very last(if not the last) player’s to bet. For this reason,
you can now play many hands that you could not play in early
position. This is true for the following reasons. |
| You will have seen most of the table act
and can assess the relative hand strength of each player. |
| You cannot be raised before the flop or
next card as you are the last to act. |
| If you hit a big hand, you will often
win a bigger pot in late position as people in front will normally
have bet or bluffed at the pot already. |
| If you see sufficient weakness, you can
steal pots and bluff people out of their hands in certain situations. |
| In summary, the first thing you should get
in the habit of doing is assessing your hands RELATIVE TO YOUR
TABLE POSITION 4,5,6,7 double suited may not even be a playable
hand under the gun in early position. In late position it is
certainly worth seeing a flop. |
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