Position is one of the most important elements of poker. If you have position you can get information about your opponents and use it against them. In this article we'll explain you how to use position and adjust your play based on it.

Maybe you don't understand why position is so important in poker, but believe me, it really is! Many players say that they can play every hand and win if they always had position, but to be honest 99% of those people are blithering idiots. But what about the remaining 1%? Well they are good players that take advantage of their position. You are going to learn how to use your position to it's full capacity and how to adjust your play accordingly.

We differentiate between 4 different positions:
The Blinds, Early Position, Middle Position and Late Position (which includes the Dealer, also called Button).

In the first round the Blinds have to post their Blinds and the first player after them in early position has to decide whether to get involved or not. His position is called 'under the gun' and he has no information about the players behind him. If he puts in the Big Blind and another player after him raises, he possibly has wasted a Blind if the Bet is too big. The value of your Position increases the later you have to act. After the first round of betting (preflop) the best position is the Button. He has information on all the other players.

So in late position you can play hands you wouldn't play in early position.

Let's give an example:
There is $5 in the Pot and 3 players in the hand on the flop. All players check and the Button bets 4$. So did he hit the flop? Did he hold a made hand? No, he bluffed. He had nothing, but after the other players all checked it was unlikely that they had something better than the bottom pair and that they wouldn't call a big bet with that. So he played well and stole the pot.

A bluff from early position would have been risky, because of the lack of information on the other players. You'd probably get called or even raised by a player behind you.

The guideline is: The better the position, the more control, the more hands playable, the more bluffs possible!