Poker Strategy

POKER STRATEGY

Position: this is one of the most rudimentary concepts in poker and it is very important to understand as a beginning player. Poker is played around a table, these days usually with 9-10 people at a table, if we are talking about Texas Hold’em or Omaha (Stud games are 8 handed). The dealer button is ground zero for the deal. That is the perspective from which the hand is dealt. If you are to the immediate left of the button you are the small blind and first to act in subsequent betting rounds to the pre-flop betting. In the first round, since you have posted a blind, you act second last and can opt to call, raise, or fold since you have only got half of the current bet out there. The big blind is to your immediate left. The big blind acts last in the pre-flop betting action, but the big blind (henceforth the blinds shall be written in shorthand, SB and BB respectively) has an option to raise it up in the pre-flop action if no one raised his blind.

Think of the button again as the focal point of the action. This position gets to act last in each betting round. This is a very powerful advantage in poker. The action starts with the player to the left of the button. As players decide to bet, call, raise, or fold, the player on the button has the advantage of seeing what all the other players have done before he makes a decision. Let’s say you have a pair of sixes in your hand. There has been a bet, a raise, and two calls when it gets to you. You can likely make a safe assumption that right now you do not have the best hand. If the raise was a large one, you should likely fold that hand. This is not information that the person to your left, in the SB position had when they originally opened the betting. When the action gets back to that person they have the decision of folding their investment in the pot already, or calling (or re-raising) the raise. Not you. You are getting to make a decision with zero investment in the pot at this point. Compared...