Introduction

• Position is a description of how early you act in the hand post flop.
• It is split into 3 groups:
  • Early
    • This is when you are one of the first to act in the hand.
    • The blinds are usually in early position.
  • Middle
    • You act somewhere in the middle. People have acted before you, but some people are yet to act.
    • The player left of the big blind (first to act preflop) is usually in middle position.
  • Late
    • The late players are last to act in the hand.
    • This includes the dealer, who is always last to act.

Calculating Position

• To calculate position, first we have to calculate the dealer distance.
  • The dealer distance is the distance a player is from the dealer.
  • A player sitting to the immediate left of the dealer would have a distance of 0.
  • Each time you move left you increment the dealer distance by 1.
  • The dealer himself would have a dealer distance of (num players - 1).
  • Players who are not active in the hand are skipped.
• Once we have the dealer distance we need to convert it to a normalized range.
  • In a normalized range the lowest value is 0 and the highest value is 1.
  • All other values are somewhere between 0 and 1.
  • To convert dealer distance to a normalized range we just divide it by (num players - 1).
  • Example:
    • We are in a game with 4 active players.
    • The dealer distances would be: 0, 1, 2, 3
    • The (num players - 1) would be 3
    • The normalized range would be: 0, 0.33, 0.66, 1
  • Once we have a normalized range we can partition it using the following rules:
    • if the normailized position is < 0.25 then the player is in early position.
    • if the normailized position is ≥ 0.25 and ≤ 0.75 then the player is in middle position.
    • if the normailized position is > 0.75 then the player is in late position.

Examples

• Example two player game:

  Dealer Distance	Normalized Position	Position
  0	0	Early
  1	1	Late

• Example three player game:

  Dealer Distance	Normalized Position	Position
  0	0	Early
  1	0.5	Middle
  2	1	Late

• Example four player game:

  Dealer Distance	Normalized Position	Position
  0	0	Early
  1	0.33	Middle
  2	0.66	Middle
  3	1	Late

• Example five player game:

  Dealer Distance	Normalized Position	Position
  0	0	Early
  1	0.25	Middle
  2	0.5	Middle
  3	0.75	Middle
  4	1	Late

• Example six player game:

  Dealer Distance	Normalized Position	Position
  0	0	Early
  1	0.2	Early
  2	0.4	Middle
  3	0.6	Middle
  4	0.8	Late
  5	1	Late

• Example ten player game:

  Dealer Distance	Normalized Position	Position
  0	0	Early
  1	0.11	Early
  2	0.22	Early
  3	0.33	Middle
  4	0.44	Middle
  5	0.56	Middle
  6	0.67	Middle
  7	0.78	Late
  8	0.89	Late
  9	1	Late

Basic Strategy

• There is an inverse relationship between position and starting range.
• The earlier your position, the stronger your hand must be.
• The later your position, the weaker your hand can be.
• This is because hands are much easier play in late position, as you get to see what your opponent does first.