Descriptions of the importance of position in poker can be found in classic texts going back decades. There are multiple aspects of this positional advantage that we will examine in this article, many of which have a common theme: information.
When our opponent acts before we do, they potentially reveal something about their hand based on whether they check or bet. Naturally when we act first, we have little idea how our opponent will respond. Thus the player in position always enjoys an information edge.
A second fundamental advantage conferred by position is that it allows us to better control the size of the pot. For example, if we are heads-up and in position and our opponent checks, we can check behind, thereby eliminating a street of betting. If our opponent leads into us and we want to build a pot, we can raise.
Based on your own experience at the poker table, you have likely noticed that playing out of position (OOP) simply feels more difficult than playing in position (IP). If you play online and use tracking software, you will be able to confirm quantitatively that this impression corresponds to results. Making money is easier when you are IP.
The button moves around the table in a clockwise direction, so that everyone at the table gets to play from every position. Given this, what is the “positional battle” and how can we expect to win it? It appears the mechanics of the game have removed any such strategic tussle.
Winning the positional battle can be broadly divided into three categories. The first is simply recognizing that we wish to play as many hands IP as possible, thus we enter more pots preflop from late position than early position. This is baked into preflop opening ranges, so following such ranges takes care of the concept automatically.
The second is pro-actively engineering situations in which we have a high probability of having the positional advantage on subsequent streets. An example, sometimes referred to as buying the button (which unfortunately has an unrelated meaning in casino play), involves 3-betting preflop in order to fold out the players between you and the blinds. This allows you to become the effective button and to have absolute position on all postflop streets.
Finally, identifying common leaks, including your own, can also help you win the positional battle. For example, even the best players lose money from the blinds. It turns out that many players have leaks in their blind play that compound these inevitable losses. The topic is sufficiently important we devote a couple of sections below to common leaks in the blinds.
The same is true of all positions of the table. By having a solid understanding of multi-street poker theory, you can address leaks in your own game from every seat. Perhaps more importantly, population data allows us to uncover positional leaks common to our opponents. A knowledge of common positional errors allows us to employ exploitative counter-measures to help us win the positional battle.
The following video by coach w34z3l uses population data to determine common positional leaks. In addition to plugging leaks that may be currently dripping money from your bankroll, the video describes exploitative positional plays that we can use against our opponents. The video gets into some fairly subtle details of the topic, and can be usefully viewed either now, or after reading the remainder of the article.
There are many positional battle tactics discussed in the above video, but there are a couple that are worth emphasizing, both because of their importance as well as their application to concepts discussed later in this article.
Poker in 2025 is more aggressive than it has ever been, particularly preflop. Many players adopt a 3-bet-or-fold strategy preflop reflecting this aggression. Indeed, in Level 1 of our CORE program, we advocate such an approach for online 6-max games.
It is important to appreciate that this CORE recommendation is made in part because of its simplicity. For relatively-inexperienced players in particular, it is frequently preferable to stick to an easily-executed strategy that gives up a little EV to a more complex one that they may mess up.
In the context of the positional battle, however, calling open-raises has a specific advantage that is often underappreciated. Position confers a greater advantage to the IP player the deeper the remaining stacks (or flop stack-to-pot ratio; the SPR). Roughly speaking, this is because of the greater leverage that the IP player can exert when there is more money left to play. Another way of looking at the situation is that, for low SPRs, the positional advantage can be completely eradicated, since one or both players will likely feel committed on many flop textures.
When we 3-bet an open, we may either win the pot preflop, or we may go to the flop IP (unless we 3-bet from the blinds). Both of these outcomes are great for us, but calling may be better. Speculative hands such as non-premium pairs and suited connectors prefer high SPRs anyway, and by just calling we keep the SPR as high as possible, enhancing the positional advantage.
Another factor that makes the positional advantage more powerful is our skill edge over our opponent. In other words, the discomfort in playing hands OOP is increased when the IP player has a full bag of tricks. This relates to our 3-bet-or-fold recommendation for inexperienced online players. If you do not have a skill edge (yet), it may be more profitable to 3-bet than call preflop since you will often end the hand right there.
Having discussed the scope of positional plays and the profit they can produce, let us look in more detail at preflop ranges and their connection to postflop situations.
The charts shown below are live GTO open-raising ranges taken from the Red Chip Poker Ranges app. In detail they assume 4x open-raise sizing and 100bb starting stacks. Clicking the dots at the bottom of the image scrolls through the ranges.
The percentages above each chart represent the fraction of hands we open-raise from each position when nobody has entered the pot in front of us. A trend immediately leaps out: as we move to later position, we open an increasing number of hands, starting with a paltry 9.3% from UTG to a whopping 40.4% from the SB.
The first point to take away from this trend is that players who have a static set of hands they view as “worth playing” are doomed to be losing players. But what in detail is driving this preflop trend, and how does it meld with postflop play?
From a purely preflop standpoint, we open a tight range from early position because there are many players left to act. For one thing, this increases the probability we will get 3-bet by a player with absolute position on us.
In live play, a more common scenario is that multiple players will call our open. This is where the connection to postflop play comes in. Even when opponents call our preflop open incorrectly, and with hands weaker than our range, this still puts us in quite a bind. It is simply difficult to play even a good hand profitably when we are OOP to a zoo.
The small blind is a special case in the positional discussion. When everyone folds to the SB, the raise-first-in percentage (RFI%) is the highest of any position at the table. This is purely driven by the fact we have only one player to get through. Postflop, of course, we will be at a positional disadvantage to the BB. This illustrates one of the wrinkles in blind play that will be addressed below.
When an opponent has open-raised before us, we have the decision to fold, call, or 3-bet. GTO range apps such as ours provide GTO solutions to such situations, telling us the correct choice to make. However, in practical play we can take the positional battle to our opponents (and win it!) by deviating from GTO and exploiting our opponents’ tendencies.
Consider the situation when an early-position player has open-raised, and it is then folded to us in the CO. Assuming our hand is strong enough to continue, the decision between calling and 3-betting is frequently based on the tendencies of the players left to act.
We already mentioned this situation in the context of “buying the button” described above. An advantage of 3-betting here is that it is more likely to knock out the button and give us absolute position postflop. But what if the button is a very nitty player? Better still, what if you are playing live and the button has their cards in hand, ready to kick them into the muck as soon as you have acted? A 3-bet may still be okay here, but if you have the sort of hand that likes a high SPR, you can safely call and still enjoy absolute position postflop.
Situations like this are common in both live and online play. Can you think of similar positional exploits you might use in your regular game? Feel free to let us know on the Red Chip Poker Discord server.
Identifying when you have absolute position on the postflop streets is an easy task. If you are on the button or there are no players between you and the blinds, you have absolute position. More difficult is the concept of relative position. It is best illustrated via an example.
Suppose you are in the BB, the button opens, and the SB and you call. In this configuration, you can anticipate having relative position on the flop, and possibly beyond. This is because the most probable action will see both blinds check and the button c-bet. Thus if the SB either folds or calls, you will be last to act in the hand and close the action for that street.
In many instances, the same action will be repeated on the turn and possibly the river. In such a situation, your relative position is definitely providing an advantage. Imagine, for example, you flop a big hand and are confident the button will c-bet. Having position on the small blind puts you in a strong position to extract a bet from them. If the button c-bets and SB calls, you can raise, potentially grabbing a bet from both of them. You might also defer the play until the turn.
If the SB flops a monster, they are going to have a harder time extracting value from the hand. Suppose again both blinds check and the button c-bets. If the SB raises, they are likely to knock you out of the pot, missing the bet that the BB can extract in the same configuration.
Another important wrinkle to relative position is that it can change over the course of the hand. Again consider the preflop situation of the button opening and both blinds calling. On the flop, both blinds check, the button c-bets and is called in both spots. The BB has relative position. But if the SB now leads out on the turn, the BB’s relative position has been destroyed.
Situations like this indicate that relative position is less clear-cut and robust than absolute position, thus the advantage it confers is more subtle. But you will come across many situations in which having relative position allows you to continue with marginal hands, or extract more value when you hit the board hard. Recognizing and exploiting such situations is another part of winning the positional battle.
In the context of the positional advantage, blind play features some inevitable difficulties. With the single exception of SB-vs-BB configuration, in which the BB enjoys absolute position throughout the hand, all other postflop formations have the blinds playing OOP.
Compounding this is the fact both blinds have to put money in the pot without seeing their cards. The net result is that even strong players figure to experience losses from both blind positions. In the case of the SB, this is around -15bb/100 hands.
However, leaks from the blinds can make an unavoidably unprofitable situation even worse. Here is coach w34z3l to outline common leaks so that you may fix them.
The above video gives a comprehensive discussion of small blind leaks, so let us simply list the most important ones identified in the player pool, and thus potentially in your own game.
The exploits of BB errors described above also suggests multiple leaks made by the population from the BB, to which we now turn.
The BB is compelled to post typically twice the amount of the SB. Thus it is not surprising that losses from this position for winning players is about double that of the SB at around -30bb/100 hands. Here is coach w34z4l to explain how we can keep these losses as low as possible.
An noted above, it is helpful to recognize the connection between BB leaks and the SB exploits of those leaks described in the previous section. Here is a summary of the factors why many players lose more in the big blind than they need to.
You cannot eradicate losses from the blinds, but the above videos indicate how you can greatly improve your play and mitigate those losses in these two tricky positions.
While many players appreciate the importance of position in poker, far fewer take proactive measures to fully exploit the positional advantage. Winning the positional battle in poker is essential if you hope to dominate your games and maximize your win-rate.
Optimizing your positional play begins preflop by using opening ranges that expand from UTG to the small blind. Isolating limpers through raises and knocking out players to become the effective button are critical tactics in building pots that you are best placed to win. Recognizing the importance of relative position in postflop situations is an underutilized skill that will contribute to your success.
In online 6-max games in particular, your play from the blinds needs to be precise. Population data indicate this is a weakness for even strong players, but one that can be fixed through leak eradication. In button-vs-blinds and blind-vs-blind battles, the tendencies of your opponents can become a determining factor in how you negotiate hands.
Bring together all these and the other factors discussed in this article and we guarantee your bankroll will benefit greatly.
This website uses cookies.