Understanding the Value of Position in Poker
In most competitive games including sports, position is critical to success. In baseball for example, the home team gets to bat last and this is seen as a big advantage. By batting last, the home team knows exactly how many runs that they need in order to win the game when they are in the final inning. There is no uncertainty because all of the information is already available. If they are tied then they only need one run in order to win or if they are down by one then they need at least two to win. For the visitors, however, they do not know what will happen when the home team bats so they lack that knowledge and are at an inherent disadvantage because they are not in the best position. The value of position is true for other sports and games as well from golf – being the last person to play giving you knowledge of the scores of everyone else who has played – to games like Texas Hold’em.
In Texas Hold’em, the value of position at the table should be obvious to the vast majority of players. As a game of information, you want as much information as possible so having your opponents make their decisions before you are required to will give you the option to make a decision last with the most information available. It is also true of Texas Hold’em that often, there is not much in play in terms of quality hands which means players are feeling each other out and playing the players more than they are playing the cards in the hole which makes having position even more important. Having a good position in poker does not mean that you are always going to win the pot but it gives you the opportunity to make better informed decisions on whether to bet or fold which will give you more opportunity to win and easier opportunities to get away from hands cheaply.
When playing Texas Hold’em the basic thought behind position is pretty easy to understand. Essentially, the later you are to act the better off you are and the fewer the number of people in the pot the more important your position is. For example, if you are last to act in a pot of 5 that is very good but if you are last to act with just one other opponent that is phenomenal. Other positions can be advantageous depending on how players around you play. Overall, however, the later that you get to act the better off you are going to be. In fact, being last to act is such an advantage that you can play much more hands as last to act than you would in any other position at the table because of the benefit you gain from having all the knowledge of the actions taken by the other players sitting in front of you.
In other poker variations like Seven Card Stud and Stud Hi-Lo, the value of position is quite different than in Texas Hold’em. In Hold’em, the later your position the better off you are but in Stud varieties, this is not always the case. The value of position is much more variable. In these games, the player with the highest showing acts first from fourth street on meaning that the person who acts first will change depending on who is showing the best hand. Typically you will have an advantage over the person who is sitting to your right but determining your positional advantages in Stud games is significantly more difficult than in games like Texas Hold’em. Some hands are better when you are not the high hand and representing certain hands is more important when you are the first person to act. You can play some hands more aggressively when an opponent is showing a high card because it means they will be more likely to act first throughout the hand giving you a probable late action advantage.
The game with the most complex position based advantages when compared to Texas Hold’em is definitely Omaha Hi-Lo. Omaha already has extremely confusing position-based advantages but in the game of Hi-Lo, the added complexities make it even more difficult. Late position has advantages in Hi-Lo but instead of being all advantage there are also some disadvantages to late position. Bluffing from a late position is almost impossible if you are playing against players with any skill and attempts to do so can cost you dearly. When compared to Hold’em where being in a middle position offers nothing in terms of an advantage, a middle position in Omaha is the perfect spot to make a bluff.
That is not to say, however, that middle position in Omaha Hi-Lo is purely advantageous as it has a number of disadvantages as well due to the fact that the pot is shared. For example, if you have the nut low – opposite of nut high – and you are in a middle position and a player in front of you bets the nuts your hand becomes much more difficult to play. Typically, the best choice in this scenario is to smooth call and hope other players behind will call in order to sweeten the pot so you are not splitting with the opposite nut hand. With that said, there are situations where you can bet and get the pot even bigger like when you expect a later player to have a nut hand as well and you can get them to reraise and have two of the other nut hands when compared to your one.
Because positional advantages are very fluid in Omaha, the conceptual last-is-best approach in Hold’em does not hold a lot of water. In general, if you have a low hand in Hi-Lo, betting first is advantageous but if you are sitting on the nut high, you would want to be in last position instead. For example, if you have the nut flush in a game of Hi-Lo betting first could kill any action that you might receive and will result in – at best – a call. If you are last to act though, you might get someone to bet in front of you or someone thinking you are using late position to bluff and get a checkraise. Betting the low hand, however, from an early position can result in opponents in later positions trying to push out other high-hand players.
When moving from Texas Hold’em to other poker variations, positional consideration becomes much different and, in most cases, much more complex. In Hold’em the later your position the better it is; whereas, in games like Omaha and Stud the value of position can vary depending on what sort of hand you are holding. Regardless, position is always important and knowing how it is important, what you can do in each position, and when you are at an advantage will help to improve your poker performance whether you are playing Texas Hold’em or Omaha Hi-Lo.
Posted by Joel
on May 12 2011. Filed under Poker Strategy.
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