Texas Hold Em Poker Tips – Exploiting Table Position

Exploiting your table position in Texas Hold Em Poker is an extremely beneficial skill to have in your repertoire. I’m going to share with you one of my favourite illustrative tips on the subject of table position. Remember the most basic fundamentals of table position? That is, that the earlier your position after the blind the less information you have about the other players moves, and, the later your position on the table the more information you have about whats going on so the better advantage you have.

Ok, so suppose you pull pocket tens from the deal and you are sitting under the gun, so you’re in first position. Its a pretty good hand so you enter the pot by raising with the aim to clear out the weaker hands dealt. Now, say for example, that one of the players behind you picks up a pocket too but its higher then yours, we’ll say Q-Q. He’s feeling pretty smug so re-raises. A few players fold, another has high cards, say A-K and just calls to sit in and one last player has a great hand like a K-K or A-A and re-raises again. Now its back to you.

Obviously by now you have realised that your nice pocket tens, although a great hand in some cases, aren’t so fabulous in this particular deal because there are alot of other good, seemingly better, hands then yours. You fold, not keen to have to add in another large bet just to stay in the game, also knowing full well this will probably escalate further.

Now, imagine for a second you were on the button, that is, last position. You get two tens. The player way down in first or second position has the queens. He raises. The second guy with the A-K would probably re-raise in this situation and the lucky A-A jerk raising again. Now its at you. The epiphanic realisation that your supposedly lucky pocket tens are, in this hand, quite insignificant and hardly great, coupled with the benefit of being in last position enables you to make the smart decision and just fold out. You save poker chips, chips you can use in a later hand.

The point is that in Texas Hold Em, the very same hand, the very same situation but a different table position has ended in a very different outcome. When you were in early position you lost money. Following this tips advice, when in late position, you saved money. A penny saved is a penny earned.

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