Win The Button Poker Strategy
- Poker table position diagram. You win more money from later positions than you do from early positions. The player on the button acts last, makin the button the most profitable position (over the long run). The seats in Red are early position.
- Poker Tournament Tip 1: Steal a Lot, But Don’t Go Overboard “Open small and often.” This phrase drove the pre-flop strategy of almost every tournament regular for years, and it still has some merit. With antes in play, a 2.25BB open has to pick up the pot less than half of the time to show an immediate profit.
- We discuss check raising strategy in more detail in our post over on unfeltedpoker.com. Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy. Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker.
How are you supposed to know where you're going if you don't know where you are?
Position is greatly undervalued by every beginner poker player. Your table position is often the difference between winning a hand and losing one.
But, if one person deals all the time, then the button-position will rotate the table over time, otherwise the dealer job passes around. Understanding where you are in relation to the dealer/button will help you develop a strategy to win Texas Hold’em. Following a very popular run in PokerStars live events the 'Win the Button' format is coming to the online MTT schedule from today. The format is a hit in live events The format is simply that the player who wins the pot will be awarded with the Dealer Button for the next hand.
Before playing a hand in Texas Hold'em you should always be aware of your position relative to the dealer button. Take a look at your position before you take a look at your cards.
- The seats nearest to the are called early position or EP for short.
- The seats nearest to the right of the button are called late position or LP for short.
- The seats in between these will be called middle position or MP.
Poker table position diagram.
- The seats in Red are early position
- The seats in Blue are middle position
- The seats in Green are late position
Early position.
Early Position is least favourable because you'll be one of the first to act after the flop. You want to avoid playing weak cards from these positions. You're relying on your cards to help you win the pot, as being first to act throughout the hand gives you less opportunities to outplay your opponents.
Don't get yourself in to trouble from EP.
Middle position.
Middle Position is better than Early Position, but it's not as awesome as Late Position. You can afford to play a few more hands from MP than you would from EP, as you do not have as many people left who can call and act after you from the flop onwards.
However, if all of the players from Early Position fold, this will still mean that you will be the first to act on each round. When it comes to poker strategy, it's not so much about your seat at the table as it is about who you've got acting before you and who you've got acting after you.
Late position.
Late Position. is highly advantageous.
There is a high chance that you will be last (or one of the last) to act on each round. This is so powerful it means you can be far more flexible with the range of hands you play. Just remember, just because you have position it doesn't mean you can get away with playing absolute junk all of the time.
'Being in position', 'having position' and 'positional advantage' all mean the same thing. Although it probably makes more sense to think of a positonal advantage as an informational advantage.
The button.
The Button is the best seat in the hand because on every betting round (except for before the flop), you will be last to act. This is amazing. This is also why you should look to play as many hands as possible (within reason) from the button. I'm usually looking for a reason not to play my hand when I'm on the BTN
The cut off.
The 'cut-off' is the position just before the button. This is the second best seat in Texas Hold'em because if the button folds, you will be the last to act on each hand. The button and cut-off are very useful positions for stealing the blinds as there are less players to act behind you, which makes it less likely that they are holding a good enough hand to call a raise with.
How to use table position in poker.
If you have position over another player, it means that you are acting after them on each round.
This means they will give you information before you make your decision.
- They could check - possibly a sign of weakness.
- They could bet - possibly a sign of strength.
- If they bet, the size of their bet could mean something.
- The time it takes for them to make their decision may also give you extra clues.
For example; if you have position over your opponent and they check quickly, this could be a sign of weakness. So you could use this information to bet out and take the pot. It's not always this easy, but getting some kind of information is infinitely better than being the one giving information to your opponent.
Poker table position example.
Lets say you're on the flop with a bunch of players in the pot, and you hold a mediocre hand like middle pair.
If there's a lot of betting and raising before the action gets to you, you can be sure that your hand isn't the best and you can happily fold without losing any chips.
On the other hand, if you are in early position you may bet out with a decent hand, only to find that there are much stronger hands out there that will re-raise you and force you to fold. Therefore you will have lost chips due to a lack of information.
The later you act in a hand, the more information you will have available to you about your opponents.
Positional awareness.
In general, you want to play more hands in position than you do out of position.
This doesn't mean that you force yourself to play any old hand when you have good position. Instead, be more inclined to play a wider range of hands when IP, but don't play this wide range of hands when OOP.
Try not to think of your position as dictating which hands you can and can't play. Instead, think of it as taking advantage of being last to act as often as you can.
Take KJo for example:
- In early position I would be reluctant to play KJo. It's on the low end of the 'good hands', and the fact that I have poor position makes it an unattractive situation. The hand isn't strong enough to counteract my positional disadvantage.
- In late position I would raise this hand almost every time if there were no raisers before me. I may also call raises with this hand if I have position on the raiser. I have an advantageous position combined with a decent starting hand, so the situation is looking good.
As a beginner player it's tricky to get to grips with the hands that are okay to play in LP, but are not good to play in EP. How are you supposed to learn the subtleties of which starting hands to play in which positions?
Trust me, you will pick it up as you go along. It will take time, but the more experience you get under your belt the more you'll get to grips with it. If you're completely new to the game, there's no harm in sticking with the premium hands and entering pots with them irrespective of position – that's okay. Just be prepared to broaden your starting hand requirements based on position as you improve.
Positional awareness graph.
Following on from my last point about playing more hands in position, here's a graph that shows a winning player's VPIP based on their position in 6max cash games.
The graph above shows the seats acting from first to last during the preflop betting round. So…
- UTG - This is the seat to the left of the big blind. This is the first player to act preflop.
- MP - This term can to varying positions between early position and late position. In this example it is the seat to the left of the UTG position.
- CO - The seat just before the button. This is the second best position in the game.
- BTN - The best seat at the table. This player acts last on every postflop betting round.
- SB
- BB
VPIP indicates the percentage of the time a player either raises or calls preflop. So essentially this chart shows the percentage of the time they 'play a hand' from each position.
Notice how this player is playing a lot more hands in late position than they are in early position. They do not play the same set of hands from all positions. They're not forcing these statistics either – they're just wisely taking in to account their table position and then selecting which starting hands to play with.
If you asked any winning cash game player to show you their VPIP by position, their stats and graphs would follow a similar trend to the one above.
Win The Button Poker Strategy Cheat
You can find out your own VPIP stats (and also those of your opponents) by using the popular Poker Tracker software.
Evaluation.
Table position is easily one of the most underestimated factors in playing a hand by many amateur poker players. Position is so important that often hands can be won or lost based on your position alone, irrespective of the strength of the cards that you and your opponent hold.
The sooner you start paying attention to your position, the sooner you will start making more money.
Further reading.
A useful article to read from here is starting hand selection, as it highlights how you should stick to playing only the strongest hands from early position due to the big disadvantage of having to act first on betting rounds.
Related articles.
- The Importance Of Position (Jack Wilcox)
Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.
Comments
If you’re an experienced tournament player, then you’re probably accustomed to the dynamics of attacking and defending blinds. Late in a tournament, the big blind usually represents a large percentage of anyone’s stack. If you can spot a player who folds his big blind liberally, then you’ve got a golden opportunity to accumulate chips with very little risk simply by raising whenever that player is in the big blind.
Conversely, you don’t want to get a reputation as someone who won’t defend his blinds, because then everyone will be trying to steal from you. Fighting back vigorously against attempts to steal your blinds is known as defending your blinds, and it’s something that tough players do to deter steal attempts and face less competition for their blinds.
A less understood but equally important concept is defending your button when stacks are deep. At this stage of a tournament, the blinds are relatively trivial, and profit comes primarily from playing in position, not from stealing blinds. This article will explain the importance of defending your button and provide some examples of how and why to do it.
The Importance of the Button
If you play or used to play online and use tracking software such as Poker Tracker or Hold ‘Em Manager, take a moment to look at your data by position. Your win rate should increase as your position improves, with a disproportionate amount of your profit coming from the button. Though this should be true regardless of stack sizes, the effect should be more dramatic if you filter for hands where everyone’s stack is large relative to the blinds. In my case, after filtering for hands where there are no antes and my stack size at the start of the hand is greater than 50 times the big blind, my win rate in the cutoff is 32 BB/100 (big blinds per 100 hands), whereas on the button it is 54 BB/100.
Imagine how much greater your win rate would be if you could play the button twice per orbit. This is essentially what happens if the player on your left folds almost always to your cutoff raises. You can take advantage of this by raising more hands from the cutoff and realizing the benefits of the best position at the table twice every orbit. For me, that would be the equivalent of increasing my win rate in the cutoff by 22 BB/100. Of course I’ll only be in that position once out of every nine hands, but that still increases my overall win rate by 2.5 BB/100, which is quite significant.
Poker is a zero-sum game, so those additional 22 BB/100 have to be coming from somewhere. Perhaps you guessed it: that’s mostly profit that could belong to the player on the button. If only he played his position more vigorously, he could do from the button whatever it is that I’m doing from the cutoff to win that additional 22 BB/100. By effectively yielding his button to me when he doesn’t have a premium hand, he is missing out on a lot of potential profit!
I look at the button as a gold mine that you have to share with eight other prospectors. When it’s your turn to reap the gold, you can’t let the others beat you to it. An aggressive player on your right who regularly raises the pot ahead of you needs to be discouraged with frequent calls and re-raises. After a while, he will either stop trying to steal your button or routinely lose money trying to play out of position against you. Either way, you win!
Three-Betting
When it comes to deterring a frequent raiser, nothing is more effective than aggressive three-betting. Although calling and playing in position can be profitable as well, it isn’t nearly as punishing since it enables your nettlesome opponent to see the flop with whatever junk he raised. By re-raising your button against a wide opening range, you force your opponent either to fold immediately and give away all of his equity in the pot or put more money into the pot from out of position.
It’s important to realize that if your opponent chooses to call your re-raise, this is not a particularly bad outcome for you, even if you were bluffing. He is still faced with the prospect of playing out of position against you on three streets, and even if you don’t actually have a big hand, you can represent one, meaning that you should have a lot of good bluffing opportunities.
Consequently, your three-bet does not need to be so large that it forces your opponent to fold all but his strongest hands. Something like two and a half times the original raise is sufficient to put pressure on an aggressive opener without risking too much of your own stack or compromising your ability to maneuver and use your position post-flop. Risking fewer chips will enable you to three-bet more often and with weaker hands, which is a great tool to have at your disposal.
Because you are offering your opponent enticing odds, you should three-bet with hands like suited connectors that have the potential to make both strong hands and strong draws, for semi-bluffing, if called. You can also re-raise hands that are well ahead of the opener’s range but easy to draw out on, such as A-J offsuit and 2-2. Think of this as a thin value bet.
Of course you’ll make this same re-raise with legitimately strong hands such as A-K and A-A as well. In fact, you’ll find that aggressively re-raising your button will help to get you more action when you re-raise really big hands, as long as you play them the same way you would your bluffs.
Calling
Although three-betting is generally a superior option for defending your button, there are times when calling is better. Some hands are simply undesirable for three-betting. Medium pairs like 7-7 are a good example. Re-raising generally causes your opponent to fold hands that you dominate and call with pairs that dominate you or with two overcards that are essentially a coin flip against you. Worst of all, they open you up to a four-bet from hands like A-A that just might lose a big pot to you if you flop a set. Unlike smaller pairs, medium pairs are resilient enough to sometimes call a bet or two post-flop when you know your opponent’s range is wide, so I generally prefer calling to three-betting with them.
Broadway hands like K-J and A-T, especially when suited, also tend to play better in single-raised pots. They are too good to fold to a player with a wide opening range, which probably includes lots of hands you dominate such as K-T, Q-J, J-T suited, etcetera. Unless the original raiser is very loose, he will presumably fold most of the hands you dominate to a re-raise but continue with hands that dominate you. Rather than manipulate his range in this way, it’s generally better just to call the raise and leave open the possibility of flopping top pair with a better kicker, which is of course a very profitable situation.
One possible drawback of just calling your button against a late position raise is that it may entice a player in the blinds to re-raise you both on a squeeze play. If you believe one or both of the players in the blinds is capable of such a play, you should call slightly less often with your weaker hands but occasionally flat call with really big hands like A-A and A-Ks in the hopes of inducing such a move.
Conclusion
Whether you re-raise or call, the important thing is not to fold when you have the benefits of a good hand and superior position. Even if you aren’t confident you’re a better player than the original opener, you should be willing to get involved rather than yield your button without a fight. It’s a valuable piece of real estate, and you need to play it – and protect it – accordingly. ♠
Win The Button Poker Strategy Against
Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He’s a member of Poker Stars Team Online and blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.