Making Poker Position Count

How To Make Position Count In No Limit Texas Holdem

Position is an incredibly useful tool in poker because it gives you the advantage of seeing how your opponents have acted. Therefore you can use the information you have gathered from your opponent’s actions to influence the decision you intend to make. However, we must remember that even though we have the advantage over our opponents that act in front of us, it does not mean that we have the right to win the hand. Using the information to determine whether or not you should fold is just as important, if not more important then determining whether or not to raise.

For example, if our opponent checks to us we can make a raise even if we don’t have a strong hand because our opponent has shown weakness, and there is a good chance that we can take down the pot. Similarly, if our opponent makes a large bet and we have a marginal or weak hand, we can fold because we have the information that our opponent has a strong hand.

 

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We can be fairly sure that an opponent has a strong hand when betting from an early position because they know that there are players left to act behind them, and they are confident enough in the strength of their hand to make a bet when there is a possibility that they could be re-raised from a player acting after them. Therefore as a general rule, the earlier the position the raise is from, the stronger the hand is.

The player with the best position at the poker table is the one at the dealer button. This is because they are guaranteed to be acting last on every round except for before the flop (and even before the flop they are one of the last to act). This makes the button the most profitable position for most players, and it makes it profitable to play almost any hand from this position as long as you exercise good restraint with your post-flop play.