Position

In Texas Hold'em whose turn it is to act depends on where the dealer button is. Starting from the immediate left of the button, each player acts in turn. A players position, is the spot in the betting order where the player sits. The player who is first to act is said to be in first position. Similarly the player in last position, is last to act in the betting round.

These facts are known beforehand. Everyone gets their turn, so does it matter when that turn comes? The answer is without a doubt yes!

Information

Position is an important concept since poker is about information. The more information you can get, the better. By reading and assessing the board you make sure that you take in all that information, and understand how strong you are. Your opponents will do the same. You and your opponents will act according to this presumed strength.

The more players in front of you who has already decided how they want to act - whether they want to check, bet, fold, call, or raise - the more information you have. Information is valuable. By their decisions they have told you something about the strength of their hands.

What Information

They are not telling you: "I have the A and the K." That is an exaggeration, but you are still getting information. The answers do not need to be that obvious in order to be valuable. The question you get an answer to is if the opponent is weak or strong. If the opponent bets, you can interpret that as if she were saying "I like how things are looking for me so far". Of course poker is a game of incomplete information, you do not necessarily know why she would want to say something like that. But you know that she has said that, and that is more than she knows about you. Because you have not acted yet, and thus said nothing.

At other times you may be getting even better information. At that point in time you know with some certainty that a check from an opponent means, "I have not improved and do not want to invest any more money into this pot." This information can then be abused by you. In a specific situation a call from a player sitting between you and a bettor, could signal that the player probably has at least a king (or something to that effect). No matter if the information you get is uncertain or really good, you are getting information that players sitting front of you did not have when they had to decide how to act.

Position Classes

You will hear people say "I decided to bet since I was sitting in middle position." They are then referring to where in the betting order they were sitting when they made that decision. It may be getting into to great detail to mention that it was from fifth position, especially since it may not have been decisive. It is a subject closely related to categorization of starting hands. As a way to quantify and group players with a similar advantage the seats at the table are referred to as being in early, middle, late, and blind position. According to the image above, at a full ten seat table, "early position" is position 3 to 5, "middle position" is position 6 to 8, "late position" is position 9 and 10, and the "blind position" is position 1 and 2.

These classes are good for deciding strength preflop, when all players are still in the race. Starting hand requirements can be based on these classes. Q J or A Q may be said to be to weak from early position but indeed playable from middle position.

How to act when sitting in the blinds deserves a special note. The blinds first action in Texas Hold'em is to post the forced bets. They are therefore last to make an own decision on the first round of betting. Two things makes it more enticing to play a hand form the blinds. First off much information about all the other players is already out there. From the blinds you know whether someone has acted really strong or if you run the risk of being reraised if you decide to just call, you know how much it will cost you to see the flop. Secondly, and what makes it even more tempting to play a hand form the blinds, you have already put some money into the pot, so it will be cheaper (or free) to tag along. When deciding how to act in the blinds one must be aware though that all of these advantages will be gone on future betting rounds and in fact be turned against you, the blinds act first from then on.

Position in Later Rounds

The classification of positions becomes less meaningful after the flop. That is the classification, the importance of position grows. As the hand progresses the information that is given away contains more substance. This article is now approaching an inexhaustible field of discussion. For now, lets settle with that the later the position of a player, the more likely a won pot is. This happens, money moves to left of a poker table as players with good position exploits the situation. For an intuitive feeling consider playing a bad hand from a bad position, for example limping (just calling the big blind bet before the flop) with sub average cards from the small blind. The outlook to win that hand are slim to none as soon as someone with better position shows some strength. From the blind perspective the later player could have unlimitedly good cards.