Holdem Positions

When you sit down to your first game of Holdem you're gonna hear the word "position" a lot. Trust us, nobody sitting at the table gives two shakes about your views on offshore drilling or wants to know what your favorite page in the Kama Sutra is. In fact, "position" or "table position" in Texas Holdem is about as simple as simple gets. It's the seating arrangement - or where you're sitting in relation to the dealer button.

But maybe we should rewind a moment and explain what a dealer button is. You see, long, long ago in a galaxy called 19th century Texas, players would take turns dealing the cards, and the deck would pass to each of them over the course of a Texas Holdem game. The problem was, eventually some players began using sleight of hand tricks to false cut, false shuffle and deal the second so that by handing them the deck you might as well have just handed them your stack.

At first it seemed impossible to overcome this little dilemma because the structure of the game depended on the rotation of the blinds around the table. A blind, in case you don't know yet, is a position in Holdem in which you have to pay the table's lower limit (the "big blind") or half the lower limit (the "small blind") before you can see your hole cards (i.e., the two cards dealt to you at the start of every game). These positions and their strategic effect on the game had become part and parcel to the way Holdem was played, so nixing positions entirely was out of the question. What wasn't impossible, though, was to bring in someone with no stake in the game to deal the cards and to leave the "dealer" position a kind of token spot on the Holdem board.

Appropriately enough - and more than likely because all good Holdem players have a first-rate sense of humor - the figuratively token dealer position eventually came to be marked with a literal token: a plastic disk about the size of a silver dollar with the word "Dealer" written on one side. Insomuch as there were no longer any special responsibilities for the "dealer," the dealer button in Holdem became more show than anything else. But, because a Holdem player sitting dealer is always the last player to the right of the blinds, it has come to delineate where the "free positions" (spots where you don't have to pay to play) end and the blinds begin.

Blinds

In every standard Holdem game there are two blinds: the big blind and the small blind. These two positions follow the dealer button, and sitting in a blind means that you have to ante up before you can see your hole cards.

At first, it would seem that sitting in a blind puts you at a big disadvantage because you're forced to bet before you've gotten a chance to see what you're betting on. However, the dynamics of playing a real game of Holdem actually give those in the blinds quite a few perks. In the case of the big blind, for instance, you've already paid to see the flop. So if nobody raises in the first betting round no one has any clue how strong your hand is. You could be holding pocket rockets or unsuited trash, and it would be all the same to the other players.

Tip! If we assume that you're playing the big blind and not giving off any tells, then, you could wait till the flop shows two kings or the makings of a straight and raise the bejesus out of the other players. In this case many will fold, and the few that remain may be holding trash too. All this is dependent on the others' skill level and how familiar they are with your style of play. But, ultimately, because you can pull the same trick after flopping a flush as after flopping scratch, you go in for a bad hand while the blinds are minuscule, then back a big hand in the big blind later when the price of poker goes up. Money says the aggressive player who called your bluff before will call you again, and this time, all that dough you lost will come back to you in spades.

As for the small blind, the benefits are a little less pronounced. Like the big blind, you have to pay to play, but because you're only paying half the table limit - and, subsequently, will have to make up the balance when the action comes to you - you can't hide your hand as well as the big blind. What the small blind does allow you to do, however, is survey all the other players’ reactions before deciding whether to put up the full bet.

Tip!Playing the small blind can be as good as gold when you've drawn complete bunk and want to gauge your chances of pulling off a bluff. If, for instance, you're playing at a "long-hand" table (i.e. one with many players) you can get out when a player who typically plays a straight hand (that is, she normally has the cards to back up her raises) bets big without having to commit to any more than half the initial bet. This might not sound like the big power plays you dream of when you think of Holdem, but every good player knows that saving money on a bad hand is just as important as sweeping it in on a good one.

Moreover, as the small blind you have the first bet after the flop. If you have a moderately strong hand, then, you can usually chase off the folks who lost on the flop and steal the pot. Be careful, though, because you'll still have to deal with the big blind, who like it or not, won't have thrown off enough clues to accurately read.

Free Positions

Most Holdem tables outside your Friday poker night require at least three players to start. This means that you'll always be up against at least two other players, one of which will be in a free seat. The last free position at the table is the dealer, and every position to the left of the big blind is free until action returns to the small blind.

The benefits of sitting in a free position are twofold. First and foremost, a free-position player can see his hand before deciding whether to bet on it. If there are strong players around you or you're sitting at a long-hand table and have pulled nada on the deal, you can just get out: no questions asked, no money spent. If, on the other hand, you're up against a small group of weak players or are playing at a short-hand table where the out odds are much more in your favor, you can just as easily raise big and chase off your opponents.

The downside to playing the free positions is you're generally betting before you see the other players' bets. For the player sitting immediately after the big blind this can be damning because although you can chase the other players off the table with a big opening bet, you're going in for a hand without any way to feel out the rest of the table. For this reason, the best free position is actually that closest to the blinds – the dealer. In this position, you have a chance to see how everyone else is betting without needing to bet at all on a worthless hand. Meanwhile, as the last free player in rotation, you can sometimes bully the blinds out and steal the pot if all the players before you have called.

All these possibilities are, of course, dependent on how the table looks at any given moment; often players holding the makings of a trump hand - say, a suited K, A - will call into the flop, and so a combination of a strong flop for them and your bullying can bring you to your knees. But at a short-hand table, this dilemma rarely surfaces, making this position the strongest at any Holdem table.