Playing good starting hands and playing your position well are very important aspects of poker. These two concepts go hand in hand. What may be a good starting hand in late position may be unplayable in early position. There are three areas of position: early position, middle position and late position. Being in early position is a disadvantage since you will have to act before most of your opponents and your opponents will have a chance to react to what you have done. Being in middle position is better that being in early position, but is still not optimal. You will be able to see what the players in early position have done, but there will still be several players to act after you. Being in late position is the most advantageous since you can see what your opponents do before it is your turn to act. You will need to play tighter in early and middle position, which means only playing the strong starting hands. However, in late position you can play a lot more hands as you will have gained information about your opponents hands based on what they have already done before you.
Different poker pros advocate using different starting hands, but generally you will only play the strongest starting hands from early position. This is because you can play the strongest hands from any position, but if you play a mediocre hand from starting position, you may be forced to fold or make a bad call if you are re-raised. Let’s say you are in early position and you hold KK. An aggressive player in late position re-raises you. You know that this aggressive player might be holding anything and you can safely re-raise them without worrying that your KK is beat. However, if you decide to play a mediocre hand from early position such as Q10and you are re-raised by the player in late position, it is very hard to call. They might have you beat with any number of hands such as K9, A2, QJ, etc. When you are in middle position you can play a lot more hands, especially when no one has called in front of you. You must remember that there are still several players to act after you and that you could get re-raised. In late position you can play a wide variety of hands if the pot is un-raised. In fact, when you have any sort of playable hand in late position, you should raise if there are no callers. If you know that the blinds are both weak players who won’t defend, you should raise with any cards to steal the blinds.
It is important to note that if you are playing short handed or with fewer players at the table, that you should loosen up your starting hand requirements. At a full table of ten players you wouldn’t want to play A8 in early position, but at a table of 5 players, you would likely raise with A8. Also, how tight or loose your opponents are will influence how you play your starting hands and your position. At a very tight table, you might want to expand your starting hand requirement since you will be able to take down a lot of pots uncontested. However, at a loose table you want to tighten up your starting hand requirements and play very aggressively when you do have a good hand, since you will be faced with a lot of callers.
Before you sit down at a poker table, you should watch a few rounds to see how the players are playing. You can then use this information to your advantage. Try to sit to the right of a tight player and to the left of the aggressive player. Sitting to the right of the tight player means that most of the time you will be acting before them. That means you can steal a lot of blinds from them. If you raise they will likely fold and you can pick up the blinds. When you notice a very aggressive player, you will want to sit to the left of them, which means that most of the time you will be acting after them. Since this aggressive player will often be raising or re-raising, you don’t want to act in front of them because you will find yourself being raised too often. By acting after them you can re-raise them when you do have a big hand or you can trap them by just calling their raise and letting them hang themselves when they aggressively bet out on the flop.
