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Playing out of position in cash games

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Tuesday November, 24th 2009 by fullhouse

As a general rule of thumb it is never a good idea to get into the habit of playing pots out of position. If you are unfamiliar with the terminology, out of position means that you will be forced to act first. There is no way to control your pre flop position, but you can absolutely control where you will be post flop. Poker players, for one reason or another, often completely disregard the concept of position. There are very few concepts in poker that will prove to be more important than your position. Position will allow you to make plays with minimized risk, and anytime you can lower your risk you are increasing your profitably.

How to avoid playing out of position

It is rather easy to avoid playing pots out of position, or at least attempt to stay away from playing pots out of position. There will definitely be situations where you make the ideal play but will still be forced to play the hand out of position, these you can do nothing about, the important thing is that you be aggressive and try. Most times a player will be playing a pot out of position when they call a 3 bet. A player calling a 3 bet implies that there was an initial raise made by that same player (or that they called a raise). If you were raising and then are 3 bet you have two choices, fold or raise. Technically you will be left with three choices, call, raise, or fold, but the aim of this article is to teach you that calling is a poor choice. Perhaps you see now how easy it really is to avoid out of position pots, all you have to do is commit to a hand with smart aggressive play (4 betting in this care) or get out of the way. What calling out of position really does is make it incredibly hard for you to profitably play the hand post flop. It is such a challenge to have to lead out on each street without any significant information on the other player(s). The other players in the hand, those who are in position, will be able to act after they gathered a solid read on you. This is precisely why it is a huge advantage to play pots when you are in position. Information is the most valuable commodity in all of poker, and when you play pots out of position you are completely out of the loop.

Deciding whether you are in or out

Now it is easy enough to understand that you should either be folding or raising, but it can be very difficult to determine when folding is the best choice and when raising is the best choice. These decisions will come down to your opponents and your hand’s relative strength. There is no magical way to help a player decide whether they should 4 bet or fold, only you can determine which play you feel is optimal given the circumstances.