Poker Position and Hand Worth

When is a hand worth something and when is it worth nothing? poker position makes all the difference here.

In majority of the situations positioning greatly affects the worth of any dealt hand—what we deem as weak or strong pre-flop. The strength of a hand is often relative—depending on what position we are coming from in the game. And there are also situations when the strength of a position differs—sometimes acting first in the game may give certain advantages.

Besides being able to see how first players react to their hand, we think about the worth of the hand because of our position come showdown. At this point in the game, all positions are practically the same, but being in late position offers a bit of an edge over the others. We have better influence when it comes to pot size—we are better positioned to exploit the worth of our very strong hands—if we hold premium hands.

Let's face it—we all will be dealt our share of bad cards sooner or later. But what really matters eventually is how much winners win and how much losers save. What we're saying is, for instance, playing in the late position, we have suited hearts of K9 and the board cards show 7 heart, ace club, 8 heart, 5 diamond, and 6 spade. Our hand is probably the best at the table. We place the opponent on aces pair or two pairs, or probably even a set. If we were to make a move before the player does and make a bet on the river, would the opponent dare make a raise? But we're in last position, and the burden of proof is on the opponent.

The opponent here has the predicament of either betting on a strong hand or not. The opponent's problem is that we might have a 9, which we do have, and dare raise to forfeit the opponent of the chance to bet more. If the opponent decides to check it's only a useless risk to forfeit a bet if it should turn out that our hand was weaker. And we'll just check the opponent on that.

Thus, we simply bet when the opponent checks us and we'll raise when the opponent bets. Being last to act, our decision can only strengthen us, while the decision of the opponent cannot do the same for the opponent's hand.

Poker Position gives worth to our hand no matter if the hand is not an AA.