Position Play – Middle Position – Part 3

Welcome to our second article on Texas Hold ‘Em tips for Position Play.  If you haven’t read the first article on how to play while early, we invite you to do so.

To recap how our table is set up:

For simplicity sake, let’s assume you are playing at a 9 seat table. There are a total of 9 players and you are one of those 9. To best illustrate position play let’s imagine that the table has been broken up into three parts, each part containing three sequentially seated players. We will call these groups: Early, Middle, and Late.

How you determine which group you are in depends on where the Button is at any given time. If the Button (or the Dealer Button) is to your immediate right, then you and the two players to your left are in the Early group; this represents players number 1, 2, and 3.  Players numbered 4, 5, and 6 will be in the Middle group.  And players numbered 7, 8, and 9 will be in the Late group.

As you already know the Button moves around the table with each hand, so your position (or seat number) will change with each hand as well.

For the purposes of this article, you are now either Player 4, 5, or 6 at this table.

We mentioned in our last article of this series that if you were playing early you had to be very careful about calling the blind and getting into the game. Our advice for the early player was to fold more often than play. In our scenario the Button has now moved around a few seats and you are in the Middle Stage. This means that some of the heat is off you now and you can play a few more hands than when you were early. But you still have to be careful.

Playing the Middle is like crossing the street.  Remember when you were young and told to “Look both ways before crossing”? Well, that same bit of good advice applies here. Look both ways. By that we mean look at what the early players are doing in this hand, and then look the other way (to the players behind you) and consider what they have done in the past. These two observations should dictate what “you” do.  Cross (meaning get into the game or stay put, meaning fold).

Let’s break this down a little bit for you.

If you are in Middle position and you are dealt a weak hand, the best advice is to fold. There is no shame in folding.

If you have a killer hand, then pay the blind (or raise). You need to see a Flop and once the Flop comes you can either continue to play (if your hand improves with the Flop) or fold.

But if you have only a marginal hand (and these are the hands that most players get most often) you need to consider the table action before throwing your money into the pot.

If a player who is early has raised and you have determined that this is a tight player, you may want to think twice before calling him. Tight players rarely raise from that position unless they have something good. Now it’s true they may be bluffing.  But then again, maybe they are not bluffing.

A loose player (one who raises all the time regardless of what his cards are) may be worth calling. How do you know if a player is tight or loose? You watch him. You pay attention to his betting habits and his win/loss stats.

Also keep in mind the players who are yet to play. If you have a hand that you want to play, consider, first, if someone in the Late group is a regular better or raiser. Conversely, it is important to know if that set of players to your left often fold if faced with a raise. If that is the case, you may want to go ahead and raise with your marginal hand in the hopes that they will fold.

Lastly, it is important to know that playing in the Middle is perhaps the most “thinking” area of the table. If you are early, it’s easy to fold just about any hand. As you will see in our next article on playing Late, this position (late) offers you more options and more safety than any other position at the table. So, it’s when you are in the Middle that you have weigh your options before calling the big blind, and you do that best by having already studied the other players and having some idea of how they act and react.

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Robert Partain writes for LayTheOdds Poker (http://www.laytheodds.com/poker), the premier resource for online Poker tutorials, informative articles, poker rules, game strategy, poker room reviews and tournaments.