You should always take position into account when making a
decision at
real money online poker games. When you are out of position, your opponents get the
advantage of seeing your actions before they have to make any of
their decisions. It requires strong hands to overcome this
information disadvantage, and that is why I recommended you be
extra tight with your starting hands in early position.
You’ll have even more trouble playing postflop from out of position. Being out of position makes it harder to play both your made hands and your draws. With your draws, it’s hard to take free cards when your opponents get to act last every street. With your made hands, you’ll have trouble figuring out what your opponents hold and how you should proceed.
If you get stuck out of position with a decent hand and a scare card hits on the river, what do you do? Do you keep betting into a potentially made hand or do you check and let him bluff you off the best hand? There’s no easy answer to the question and that’s why it’s best to pay attention to your position from the beginning and try to avoid the situation in the first place.
If you play your starting hands with position in mind, it will make your postflop decisions much easier overall. Remember to only play your strongest hands from out of position and your marginal hands when in late position.
A common thing that gets people into position trouble is an insistence on defending their blinds. In no-limit, defending your blinds is not important. The blinds are so small in comparison to your starting stack size that playing hands from out of position is almost always going to be more costly than just letting that one big blind go. Sometimes you can 3-bet opponents if they are stealing with a wide range of hands and there’s a good chance they’ll give up on the pot. Use this play sparingly at poker sites online because most of the time it’s just going to get new players into trouble by building a big pot out of position.
When you are the one in position, you have a lot more freedom to play hands and abuse your opponents. If you are in late position and nobody has yet entered the pot, you can raise a wide range of hands and attack the people who are in the blinds. Now that the tables have turned, you can go after the blinds because you have all the advantages that come with acting last each street. Good players in late position can make it very hard for their opponents to win pots without strong hands.
If your opponents fold to your steals that’s great because you get free money in the form of blinds. If they defend their blinds, that’s great too because you now get to play a pot while in position. Most of your opponents won’t know what to do so they’ll end up folding on either the flop or turn. If you find out you’re up against a calling station that’s ok too because now you can just give up on the blind stealing and instead play a straightforward game.
When it comes to position, it’s better to play it safe than sorry. If you’re ever not sure of whether or not it’s a good idea to play a hand from out of position, take the safe route and fold. As you get more experience at no limit, you can get a better feel for which hands are playable from out of position and which hands aren’t. For now though, it will serve you best to play on the conservative side when out of position. There’s always plenty of time to play extra hands when you get in to late position.