Trap Potential and Poker Position

A good position is a mere step to winning, but it could disarm us for a potential trap against the opponent.

Good position is a blessing when we simply wait for players to fold. But it becomes a curse when we plan on trapping the opponent. Trapping is often a disadvantage when we're playing from a late position. When we have a strong hand and someone checks us, we're faced with a dilemma: bet to secure our hand or check to goad a wager from a player acting before us post flop.

Say, we decide to wager our trip aces, we might only be met with cold folding of hands and have nothing in pot but meager winnings. That puts out monster hands to virtually nothing. Say, we decide to check, this means a free card wasted for other players' benefit and even give one a draw to trash our hand with. This would be a curse on a good position.

It's sometimes worth it to take advantage of a strong hand aggressively than slow-pay it. Some focus on their slow-play to trap players with and neglect the opportunities to make big pots and win them too. Fact is, betting into community cards with double aces and we're coming from a later position often means an attempt to take or steal the pot. And this would attract callers (not raisers) who won't buy the act and think we're bluffing.

When there are such callers in this situation, we bet to make them learn much from their calls. If, say, our hand isn't that strong, at least we may be able to steal the pot with virtually nothing if they'd seen us doing this before with a strong hand. We should remember that hands seem to have more potential when we're playing late position not because hands have actually changed value. The fact is that our odds have been improved over the long term from knowing more information about the opponents and getting a hold of the table.

For instance, why did 10h and 9h become a potential hand? Because we're playing button. Hence, we would be able to face a raise pre-flop if we had limped with it, than if we had played under the gun—then the table would have been turned on us.

Poker position toughens our hand more, but we have to know how to exploit such toughened hand and what right bet strategy would beautifully match it for a bigger pot.