Positions at the poker table

Your position is your seat relative to the dealer button. The later you act, the more you see before deciding: the button is the best seat, under the gun (first after the big blind) the worst. Play few hands early and more late — about 9% under the gun at a nine-seat table and 42% on the button.

Position does not change your cards. It changes how much you know, how often you get a free card and how big the pot grows. Over thousands of hands that matters more than most players think.

Seats are named by where they sit relative to the button. The table lists them in the order they act before the flop.

The first three seats are early position, MP and HJ are middle position, CO and BTN late position. The blinds are a group of their own: they already have chips in, act last before the flop and first after it.

Take away the first four seats of a full table and you have a five-seat one: UTG, CO, BTN, SB and BB. Its first seat has four players behind it, exactly like the hijack at nine seats, so it can open about a fifth of hands. The cutoff, the button and the blinds play as they do at a full table.

What matters is not how many chairs the table has but how many players still act after you. Keep that number in mind and the rest follows from it.

Switch between nine and five seats and tap any seat. You will see when it acts before and after the flop and which hands we suggest playing from it. Gold squares are hands that join the range at that seat; for the big blind the grid shows our defence against a button raise.

Think back to the example hand in our rules guide: you held A♠ J♠ on the button, and Ramses, first to act, had K♦ 10♦. On every street after the flop Ramses had to decide first. When he bet, you knew he liked his hand; when he checked the river, you bet your flush and left the decision to him. Had you been first to act, you would have had to guess.

• Information. You see what everyone before you did. A check often means weakness, a big bet strength. Out of position you act in the dark.
• Control of the pot. With position you can check behind for a free card, or keep the pot small with a medium hand.
• Cheaper draws. When the player before you checks, your flush draw sees the next card for nothing.
• Easier bluffs. After two checks in front of you, a bet from the button often takes the pot at once. More in bluffing for beginners.

There is plain arithmetic too. The more players act after you, the more likely one of them has a big hand. Leaving aside the cards you hold, the chance that at least one of eight random hands is jacks or better or ace-king is about 22%; with two players behind you it is about 6%. The first seat raises into a full table, while the button only has to get past the blinds.

Below are the ranges we suggest for opening with a raise when everyone before you has folded. They are our own, built from the starting hands data: the 169 hands sorted by their average place against one to eight random opponents and taken from the top until each seat’s share is filled. Sorting by the average puts hands that are good only heads-up (K5o) and hands that are good only in a crowd (54s) in the middle, which is where they belong.

A few things stand out. Pairs from eights up and the big suited aces are in from the first seat. Small pairs and suited connectors join late, because they need cheap flops and big pots. Weak offsuit hands such as K7o and Q8o appear only on the button, where only the blinds are left. Hands just outside the button range — 2-2, 6♠ 5♠, 5♠ 4♠ — are close calls: they do best in big multiway pots, while a button raise usually ends up against one or two players. Add them when the blinds are passive and the stacks are deep.

Treat the ranges as a starting point. If the players behind you fold too much, open more; if someone keeps re-raising, open less. Calling a raise is another question altogether: a raiser holds better than random cards, so the hands you call with should be tighter than the ones you raise with.

The small blind is the hardest seat to play. Half a bet is already in, which tempts you to play, but after the flop you act first against everyone. When it is folded to you, we suggest raising about a third of hands and folding the rest; just completing the blind to see a flop out of position slowly leaks chips.

The big blind has a full bet in and the last word before the flop, which gives you a discount on every call. At the Scribes’ Table a button raise to 250, with the small blind folding, leaves 400 in the pot and costs you 150 more: you need 27.3% equity. We checked every hand against our 42% button range, and all 169 clear that bar — even 7-2 offsuit has 29.3%.

That does not mean you should call with everything. Out of position you will fold on many flops and lose part of your equity. If we assume you keep about four fifths of it, the bar rises to 34.1%, and 139 of the 169 hands — about 76% of all deals — still clear it. Defend with roughly three hands in four and fold the weakest offsuit ones: 7-2, 8-3, 9-2, 6-2, 3-2 and their neighbours.

• Five or nine seats. You choose the size in the Temple of Fortune hall. A five-seat table plays like the last five seats of a full one.
• Count players, not chairs. When few people are around, AI opponents fill a nine-seat table up to four players and a five-seat table up to three. With four players dealt in, the first to act is in effect the cutoff.
• The button moves to the next player dealt in. Nobody skips the blinds, and nobody pays an extra blind to come in.
• Heads-up the order flips. With two players the button posts the small blind and acts first before the flop, then last on every later street.
• 15 seconds per move. A late seat gives you the most information; take the time to look at what the others did.