4 replies to this topic

[akishore]

i know that position is important in any form of poker (of course).you have knowledge of what your opponents will do, and since poker is an information game, this obviously gives you an edge.you also are able to act last, which can help you out tremendously in maximizing profit and minimizing losses (e.g. raising for a free card, protecting your hand).however, it is a simple fact that in many cases, we are out of position. my question is, how do you adapt to various situations when you're IN position, and how do you adapt to those same situations when you're OUT of position?examples of ideas that i have which confuse me a little:1. tom mcevoy generalized in a cardplayer article that the worse position you have, the quicker you want to end the hand, and the better position you have, the more you want to drag the hand out.his example went something like this. it's a NL tournament. a player opens with a raise in MP/LP, it folds over to you in the SB/BB. you have JJ/QQ/AK. you should reraise and try to take down the pot right there since you don't want to see a flop out of position. if you were on the button, you should call instead, assuming that no one else has called and you don't need to reraise to isolate.2. this goes against some other example i read. i forgot who the author was, but i remember skimming a book at barnes&noble, and reading a section on AK. the author said that if you're raised/reraised pre-flop with AK, one factor that should help you in deciding to call or reraise should be position. if you're out of position, you should call since you are handicapped, but if you're in position, you can afford to reraise since you have an edge. note that this directly contradicts tom mcevoy's idea above.maybe the difference is that this author assumes that a raise/reraise would not take down the pot, but would only build it up more (because you have equity), and mcevoy assumed that a raise had a substantial chance of inducing a fold. so does the principle completely flip around in deep-stack poker versus short-stack poker? (since a reraise is more likely to be called and a flop more likely to be seen in deep-stack poker)3. russ georgiev has written some excellent PLHE articles, and in one article, he writes about how he can play a PLHE game seeing ALL flops (or at least 90% of flops). he realizes that in many situations, he will be out of position, but he sacrifices this edge on half of his hands because he feels that he gets bigger edges from being loose and unreadable, depending on various circumstances.one idea he talks about is that he adapts to being out of position by surrendering control of the betting. that is, he always checks when he's out of position, and lets him opponent dictate the betting (which makes a world of difference in PLHE because of pot manipulation). maybe this means he really does have some sort of position because his first action is always the same, so his real action occurs after he knows what his opponent will do. but this is still a little generic... does this mean that he'll check top pair or some likewise hand on a dangerous drawing board? it also seems that by checking, he is willing to prolong the hand out of position, which again goes against mcevoy's generalization.4. in my own experience, i use the presence of a post-flop edge to sway my decisions based on position. for example, if a rock/readable player raises pre-flop in deep-stack NLHE, and it folds over to me on the button with AA, i will only call. i have a stronger post-flop edge against him, and there is no need for me to gamble pre-flop on even a 4-to-1 edge. if i have AA in the small blind and it folds over to me, i will reraise because some of my post-flop edge is gone. this seems to agree with mcevoy's generalization, because i want to get the money in the middle as soon as possible and i don't want to stretch out the hand.so as you can see, i'm a little confused and a little hazy. i guess for the most part, i am concerned with NL cash games or NL tournaments. position is exponentially more important in NL (or PL) than in limit, IMHO, and it's an issue i'm really struggling with right now.thanks in advance for any help.aseem

[Swift_Psycho]

I like McEvoy's advice. That might just be me though.

[JistTheFist]

Mcevoy's seems to be the best advice in my opinion... I stopped slowplaying in vulnerable situations a long time ago... you just can't afford to let people chase... so you want the hand to be over as soon as possible. but I'm sure he's also thinking of the fact that even if you can't end the hand right there, you still have the best hand most of the time.

[RISEorFall]

I think in Dan Harrington's book he agrees with McEvoy here. I forget what specific example he uses, but I know he talks about using your position and stretching out the hand to let your advantage work for you.

[Rocketwadster]

Harrington gives some good reasoning in Volume 1 of his book (a must read :!: ). In a nutshell, he indicates that depending on your position, you need better hands to call/re-raise to a raise then you do to make the initial raise, or something like that. :? I've only read it once, so I generally understood what he was saying, but can't repeat it to the masses. :wink: