Playing Hands Out of Position

     There are many hands that can be played profitably at a holdem table, but few of those hands can be played at a profit from anywhere at the table.

     Consider the following scenerios . . . you are on the button, acting last, and look down and find 66 in the hole. A pocket pair is a nice find. The betting starts and it goes fold, fold, bet, fold, raise, re-raise. when it comes to you, you are looking at cold calling a raaise and a re-raise with a small pocket pair. You toss the cards into the muck. No loss taken on that hand.

     Now, you have the same cards, but are sitting in earlier positon. You call the big blind, hoping to see a flop for cheap and maybe hit a set. This time you act ahead of the raisers. By the time it comes back around to you, you would have to call two raises to stay in for the flop. You muck the cards, and lose a big blind's worth of chips.

     That is an example of a hole in someone's game. Position at the table is noticed most when you are on the blinds, or on the button. But, winning players take note of their position, and act accordingly on every hand.

     Another example of a hand that can go bad when played from early position is KTo. This is the kind of hand that can be dominated by AK, KQ, or even KJ. Suppose the following takes place . . .

     In early position, you call the big blind with KT offsuit. The action goes fold, fold, raise. By the time the action comes back to you, you find yourself looking at calling a raise, out of position with a hand that can be dominated. Do you fold and waste one bet, or is there enough money in the pot to carry on the hand? Either way, it's not the best looking of situations. You've already paid too much to see a flop with the hand you have, and now you find yourself out of position for the rest of the betting rounds.

     For some examples of how the values of a hand can change depending on your position at the table, I strongly recommend at least visiting Poker Room.com and looking through their Expected Values information. The poker room has been keeping track of the EV of different poker hands at their texas holdem tables. They offer charts, and a search function so you find out the EV of any hand, at several different betting levels, in any position.

     And, they use real world information. These are the results from the games played on their tables, not charts created via computer simulation. Visit Poker Room.com (that link opens a new window) and click on their "poker school" page (it's on the right hand side of that bar going across the top, underneath the word "support"), and then click on "Expected Value Stats" in the light green bar.

     If you review the information, you will be able to see how some hands change from negative expectation (losers in the long run) to positive expectation depending on the player's position at the table.