<---Back To Poker Articles Menu

Thinking About Position (Part 1)

A loose game is one with 6+ players regularly seeing the flop with sparse or no pre-flop raising. Essentially you need to be paid off and have at least a 15% chance of winning the hand. That is assuming your cards are not dominated or someone is not limping with a very strong hand. I would actually want cards that have a 15% minimum to 20% more favorable odds (6+ players) chance just to stay tighter than the other players.
A typical game is 3-5 people seeing the flop with 1 out of every 4 hands having a pre-flop raise. You have to consider pre-flop raises cutting into your bottom line. If one out of every four times you are run off your hand be a preflop raise then you should consider only going in with cards that have a 20% minimum (5 players) 33% minimum (3 players) chance of winning at the showdown compared to the number of players limping in.
A tight game is where there are 1-2 people seeing the flop and there is a pre-flop raise 3 out of every 4 hands. So you want to have cards that have at least a 33% chance of winning at the showdown to break even before considering pre-flop raising. So with 2 players seeing the flop I would feel more comfortable having cards that win 40%+ of the time because you essentially have a 33.3% chance of winning without considering the actual cards.
The numbers after the suggestions are the number of players who see the flop and the % of the time that particular hand will hold up and win.

One more note about this hand chart, if you are in a tight game in middle to late position and there has been 2-3 bets pre-flop before getting to you then ignore the chart and just use the top 10 hands on the chart. Especially if you are a beginner. Some players, including myself, will go in very occasionally with a 5-6 or 6-7 suited if there are 2-3 people in a tight game raising pre-flop. Why? Let’s look at a few numbers;
4 people including your self seeing the flop;
Pre-flop odds you have - 5c6c 41.704 % player 1 - AdKh 32.122 % player 2 - AsQs 19.783 % player 3 - KsQd 6.392 %
So what is going on here? Do any 2 cards have an equal chance of winning? Well, no, not at all. Since 2 people have an ace, the values of the aces go down, same with the queens and kings. There is no made hand here, they all need help. You have a better shot because as far as you know there are 6 outs to make a pair, all the flush outs and a straight draw on both sides of your connectors. The AK, AQ or KQ does not have that same straight possibility. Of course if an over cards fall on the flop or later then your cards are probably worthless and should typically be thrown away. Even if you flop 2 pair, don’t become too brash. Someone may have one pair on the flop, say with a flop of 5,6,Q. You have the best
hand but if a K or A fall on the turn or river then someone else will have a better 2 pair. It has happened to me more than I would like to remember. Finally, if someone has a made hand like AA to 99 you are already in trouble so try to understand who is doing the pre-flop raising. Are they pushing small edges with over-card draws or do they usually only raise with a pair?
If you look at the chart above you will see that wired pairs are very powerful, the higher the pair the better it plays against more players. AA pays off 44% of the time with 6 players. So you are risking 1/7th of the money but getting much better percentage chance to win. Many professional players use the concept of what is called “pair poker” and push that small edge trying to isolate 1 or 2 players. If you look at the wired pair of 99 you see that it wins 71% of the time against one player. That is excellent odds compared to the money in the pot. Even against 2 other players you could possibly (depending on their hands) wagering only 1/3 of the money but getting a 52% chance to win the pot. It is a race against 2 players but the money wagered is in your favor. Once again these are static numbers and do not represent all situations but your job as a poker player is to identify those times when you could have better odds than your opponents.

Continue to Thinking about Position (part 2)----->