Posted by Johnnymac 6:52 PM
Location, Location, Location!

One of the most commonly unappreciated aspects of holdem, by both new and experienced players alike, is the importance of position. When I first started playing the game five years ago I completely disregarded the advice in my books about position because I was much more interested in mixing things up and playing! than I was interested in seemingly not-as-fun strategy. It’s rather difficult to quantify why late position is better than early position, but once you’ve logged enough hours at the table and you begin to appreciate the game and to transcend the immediate bet-raise-call-fold aspect of poker, you begin to see that going last has some major advantages. Sometimes with the same two cards it’s proper to draw and sometimes it’s good to call a raise and sometimes it’s right to fold and in all of those situations your decision is heavily influenced by where you are sitting relative to the dealer button. I saw a lot of tough guys in pretty shirts making some rather pointedly weak plays this weekend because they were not aware of their position at the table.

Probably the most obvious advantage to going late is that you are protected by people raising behind you and thus costing yourself a bet when you should have folded. If I am receiving pot odds of 10 to 1 and have 6 outs left in the deck, it’s proper for me to call a bet because in the long run I will win 10 bets for every 8 bets that I lose for a net gain of 2 bets. However, if I am forced to call a raise to see another card my pot odds are now just 5 to 1 and I lose 3 bets in the long run. When the raiser goes first I can make my decision based on whether I have a positive or negative expectation relative to the pot and I can call or fold accordingly. However, if the raise is behind me I have now already put the bet into the pot and may or may not be getting proper odds when it comes time to call the raise, especially if the raise causes other players to fold. In this case I have already sacrificed a bet and may no longer have any chance of recovering it. Thus, it’s better to go later because it’s more likely that you will be acting behind raisers and thus will have a better quantity of information on which to act.

One of the worst – and most frustrating – poker plays I saw this weekend came in Saturday’s 6-12 game. I was in mid position with a strong drawing hand. A very transparent player raised from the button before the flop and when the flop was rather raggedy everyone checked hoping to see 4th street cheaply for just one bet. I thought this was an obvious play because there were no clear straights or flushes or high cards on the board and thus it was unlikely that anyone had made a hand that could challenge a pre-flop raiser’s likely AA or KK. I say that I thought it was obvious because the player immediately in front of the raiser quite blithely threw his chips into the pot when the action was checked to him and the raiser quite naturally raised right away. This completely changed my strategy of calling for one bet and I was forced to fold a rather strong draw because I was no longer getting the proper odds for taking that draw. All of the other players folded against the expensive raise and the raiser’s AA quite handily defeated the blithe caller’s 67o that had paired on the flop.

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