Table Position in Poker

Position is simply where you are sitting in relation to the dealer's button. In holdem and many other poker games, your position at the table is a big factor. The strength of your position comes from the fact that the betting goes in a clockwise fashion. In a favorable position you get to see how many other players react to their hands and whether they fold, bet, or call before you do. The poker phrase, "Position is power" comes from this simple idea.

There are many names associated with position to identify where players are sitting in relation to the dealer's button. Each particular position has its own strengths or weaknesses.

• The small blind has the worst position after the flop and must invest half a bet.



• The big blind invests an entire bet and similarly has a poor position.



• The player under the gun has the worst position preflop and a junk position afterwards.



• The button has the best position during any betting round.

The importance of your position depends on many factors. For example, in no limit holdem, position is much more important than in limit holdem. It is always better to be in an late position though, so it is important to identify what hands are generally playable in all positions.

For example, lets say you're under the gun. You have Queen-Ten, unsuited and decide to limp into the pot. The player to bet after you raises, and everyone but you folds.. Now you're in a jam. Chances are good that this player has a better hand than you. If they have any ace, king, or pocket pair, they are statistically better than you. You'd suspect that someone who raised has at least a hand like that. Now you can either call again and go into the flop as an underdog or you can fold and just give up a bet. What's worse is that if you call, you will be acting before this player for the rest of the hand.

On the other hand, let's say you're on the button. You have Queen-Ten, unsuited and everybody folds to you. One option would be to fold and let the blinds fight it out. Another would be the just call and see what happens on the flop. Many players here would raise because you could steal the blinds and even if you didn't, you'd act after them for the remainder of the hand. Raising is only a viable option because of your favorable position.

Another notable factor is that position goes hand in hand with knowing the players directly around you. For example, an aggressive, blind-stealing player to the immediate right of a tight player usually results in the tight player's blinds getting stolen.

Being in late position with a good hand has major strengths over being early with a good hand. Early position raisers are assumed to have a good hand and it tends to scare players away. Early preflop raises can force the other players to call two bets at once (or more in the case of pot limit or no limit holdem) when there is nearly nothing in the pot worth fighting for. In late position, there may be players who have already called one bet. Those players only have to call one bet (in limit) with a little something already in the pot. So players in late position with a good hand have the ability to manipulate the pot size, which will make future bets easier to call in the upcoming betting rounds.

Having a Poker Face

article by Ashley Adams

Ask the average Joe what the most important thing is to being a good poker player and he'll often answer, "Uh, I don't know. Maybe having a good poker face." At least that's been my experience. The public at large seems to put a lot of stock in this. But what does it really mean?

Traditionally, having a poker face has meant having a face that doesn't betray the strength or weakness of one's poker hand. "Poker face" is often synonymous with inscrutable. This is the face we are all encouraged to maintain, to keep from giving off those unconscious clues to our hand known as tells. If we look happy when we have a good hand others will know that we are strong and avoid us by folding when we bet. And, similarly, if we look upset when we have a bad hand there's no way we'll be able to properly execute a bluff.

But at the risk of offending the poker purists out there I'd like to update the definition of a "poker face" Before I do so, however, I'd like to go to the root of what we as poker players should be using our faces, chiefly, to do. We who take poker seriously believe that our primary mission in a poker game is to make money. True, having fun and socializing may be part of playing poker for us, but fundamentally, poker is about winning. And winning in poker means winning money. How do we best do this? From my experience, there are chiefly two ingredients.
The first, of course, is to develop our skill – to learn the relative value of starting hands, to understand in 7-Card Stud how exposed cards change these values – and to understand how our hand's winning probability of winning changes as the hand progresses from Third Street to the River. Similarly, we need to understand how best to exploit our hand's weakness or strength with appropriate betting, raising and folding. And, as we increase our skill, we must also learn how to exploit the weaknesses and strengths of our opponents – to make the most of the hands we have while minimizing our losses when we are weak.

But our skill is just one ingredient necessary for consistent winning. The other ingredient, and often the easier ingredient to acquire, is to take our skill and to pit it against less skillful players. Simply put, it's not enough to be good. We must find bad opponents who will play against us. Though there are thousands of articles and hundreds of books on the former – and that's just for Stud, there are painfully few articles or books on the latter. But finding bad opponents is often every bit as important as improving one's poker skills. And, I suggest, it often comes back to having a poker face – as I define it. You see, for me, the best poker face isn't that expressionless, stern or serious mask, worn to prevent opponents from gaining any insight into my hand.

The bad players I want to play against don't understand their own cards – they surely can't figure me out. No, for me, the ideal face for playing poker is the face that invites the poor player to sit down next to me – that encourages the newbie, the neophyte, the unaware, the eager and the otherwise awful player to join me for a game. . Say what you want about looking intimidating, serious and inscrutable. I want to look friendly, sweet, innocent and inviting. My poker face is a smile.