1. The big blind is the position next to the small blind. He must make a full bet, regardless of his cards, but he's still in a better position when the play comes back around. Being in one of these positions – button, small blind or big blind – gives you the best opportunity to bluff.
2. The big blind is usually (but not always) the minimum bet size. The small blind is usually half that amount, but in some situations it will be 1/3 or 2/3 of the big blind. A poker game could be played with two equal-sized blinds instead, or with three blinds. An ante is a small amount of money from every pla.
3. This set of 2' Small Blind, Big Blind and Dealer poker buttons will lend your game a distinct casino feel.

• Poker Small Blind E Big Blind Brackets
• Poker Small Blind Big Blind Rules
• Poker Small Blind E Big Blind Auditions

In the small blind you have are forced to place money into the pot before the cards are even dealt but only half of what the big blind is forced to bet. Because of this people will often decide to put more money into the pot thinking that its only a little big more anyway to see the flop.

Texas Hold’em is arguably the most famous of all poker games. If you are new to the game of poker, Texas Hold’em Poker is a great place to start. Hold ’em consists of two cards (“hole cards”) being dealt face down to each player and then five community cards being placed face-up by the dealer — a series of three (“the flop”) then an additional single card (“the turn”) and another additional card (“the river”) – with players having the option to check, bet, raise or fold after each deal; i.e., betting may occur prior to the flop, “on the flop”, “on the turn”, and “on the river”.

Texas Hold’em Rules:

Texas Hold’em Poker is a community card game that can be played anywhere from 2-10 players.

1. One player acts as dealer. This position is called the button and it rotates clockwise after every hand.
2. The two players to the left of the dealer are called the small blind and the big blind, respectively.
3. These two positions require forced bets of a pre-determined amount and are the only players to put money in the pot before the cards are dealt (if no ante in place).
4. Every player then receives two cards face down. These are called “hole” cards.
5. Once all hole cards have been dealt, the first betting round begins with the player sitting immediately to the left of the big blind. This player can fold, call (match the amount of the big blind) or raise.
6. Betting then continues clockwise, with each player having the option to fold, call the amount of the highest bet before them, bet or raise.
7. When the first betting round is completed, three community cards are flipped face up on the table. This is called the flop.
8. The betting resumes, clockwise, with each player having the option to check (if no bet is in front of them), bet (or raise if a bet is before them), call or fold.
9. When the second round of betting is finished, a fourth community card is flipped face up on the table. This is called the turn.
10. The third round of betting commences with the first remaining player sitting to the left of the button.
11. When the third round of betting is over, a fifth community card is flipped face up on the table. This is called the river.
12. The fourth round of betting starts with the first remaining player seated to the left of the button. The betting continues to move clockwise.

The Details

Now here are some more detailed looks at aspects of Texas Hold’em.

A standard hold ’em game showing the position of the blinds relative to the dealer button.

Hold ’em is normally played using small and big blinds – forced bets by two players. Antes (forced contributions by all players) may be used in addition to blinds, particularly in later stages of tournaments. A dealer “button” is used to represent the player in the dealer position; the dealer button rotates clockwise after each hand, changing the position of the dealer and blinds. The small blind is posted by the player to the left of the dealer and is usually equal to half of the big blind. The big blind, posted by the player to the left of the small blind, is equal to the minimum bet. In tournament poker, the blind/ante structure periodically increases as the tournament progresses. After one round of betting is done, the next betting round will start by the person after the big blind and small blind.

When only two players remain, special ‘head-to-head’ or ‘heads up’ rules are enforced and the blinds are posted differently. In this case, the person with the dealer button posts the small blind, while his/her opponent places the big blind. The dealer acts first before the flop. After the flop, the dealer acts last and continues to do so for the remainder of the hand.

Play of the Hold’em hand

Each player is dealt two private cards in hold ’em, which are dealt first. Play begins with each player being dealt two cards face down, with the player in the small blind receiving the first card and the player in the button seat receiving the last card dealt. (As in most poker games, the deck is a standard 52-card deck containing no jokers.) These cards are the players’ hole or pocket cards. These are the only cards each player will receive individually, and they will only (possibly) be revealed at the showdown.

The poker hand begins with a “pre-flop” betting round, beginning with the player to the left of the big blind (or the player to the left of the dealer, if no blinds are used) and continuing clockwise. A round of betting continues until every player has folded, put in all of their chips, or matched the amount put in by all other active players. Note that the blinds in the pre-flop betting round are counted toward the amount that the blind player must contribute. If all players call around to the player in the big blind position, that player may either check or raise.

After the pre-flop betting round, assuming there remain at least two players taking part in the hand, the dealer deals a flop, three face-up community cards. The flop is followed by a second betting round. All betting rounds begin with the player to the button’s left and continue clockwise. After the flop betting round ends, a single community card (called the turn or fourth street) is dealt, followed by a third betting round. A final single community card (called the river or fifth street) is then dealt, followed by a fourth betting round and the showdown, if necessary.

In all casinos, the dealer will “burn” a card before the flop, turn, and river. The burn occurs so players who are betting cannot see the back of the next community card to come. This is done for historical/traditional reasons, to avoid any possibility of a player knowing in advance the next card to be dealt.

The Showdown

If a player bets and all other players fold, then the remaining player is awarded the pot and is not required to show his hole cards. If two or more players remain after the final betting round, a showdown occurs. On the showdown, each player plays the best poker hand they can make from the seven cards comprising his two hole cards and the five community cards. A player may use both of his own two hole cards, only one, or none at all, to form his final five-card hand. If the five community cards form the player’s best hand, then the player is said to be playing the board and can only hope to split the pot, because each other player can also use the same five cards to construct the same hand.

If the best hand is shared by more than one player, then the pot is split equally among them, with any extra chips going to the first players after the button in clockwise order. It is common for players to have closely valued, but not identically ranked hands. Nevertheless, one must be careful in determining the best hand; if the hand involves fewer than five cards, (such as two-pair or three-of-a-kind), then “kickers” (the highest other card) are used to settle ties. Note that the card’s numerical rank is of sole importance; suit values are irrelevant in Hold’em. The last player to bet is the first player to show his hand.

Now that you know how to play Texas Hold’em poker, you are ready to hit the tables! Sign up today to get started and win real money!

Position is one of the most important concepts in poker and is something that a lot of new players get completely wrong.

To put it simply:

Position in poker refers to the order which players are allowed to act. A player who acts first is “out of position” while a player who acts last is “in position”. Playing in position gives a distinct advantage due to the extra information gained and the ability to more effectively control the size of the pot.

There are two scenarios to discuss regarding position: preflop and postflop.

During the preflop round of betting, you can either be playing from early, middle, late position or the blinds with further breakdowns depending on your exact seat (which we will get into in a moment).

While postflop, your actual seat doesn’t matter and it becomes much simpler because you are either “in position” if you act last, “out of position” if you act first or somewhere in between if there are more than two players in the pot.

The important thing to remember is that these two aspects are related. When you play from an early position preflop, you are more likely to have to play out of position postflop. Whereas if you play a hand from late position you are fairly likely (or in some cases guaranteed) to be playing in position for the rest of the hand.

The fact that your starting seat determines whether you are more or less likely to be playing in position postflop is a very important factor that drives our opening strategy quite significantly.

Let’s dig deeper into this and find out what the positions are on the table and why understanding position is so important to playing winning poker.

Table Of Contents

• What are the starting positions in poker?

What are the starting positions in poker?

Each seat at the table is given a unique name which allows poker players to easily identify what hands they should be playing (more on that later) and how they might expect their opponents to play.

These seats are grouped into one of four categories:

• Early position
• Middle position
• Late position
• The blinds

The naming of the positions differs slightly depending on how many players are seated at your table, but let’s first take full-ring (9 handed) which is the most common casino format.

The image below shows the four categories we mentioned but also broken down further with the names of each seat.

In case you aren’t familiar with the acronyms, here’s what they stand for:

• UTG: Under the gun
• MP: Middle position
• HJ: Hijack
• CO: Cutoff
• BTN: Button
• SB: Small blind
• BB: Big blind

Early position

The first seat to act is referred to as under the gun and is located in early position. “Under the gun” is a term that means to be “under pressure to act” as in you are “being held at gunpoint”.

This translates to the analogy of the first seat at the poker table who is under pressure to make the opening decision of the freshly dealt hand.

On a full ring table with nine players in total, there are eight players waiting to act after UTG. So there is a strong likelihood that if you decide to play your hand, another player at the table will wake up with a premium hand.

Even if someone is dealt a mediocre hand and decides to play, you will be playing out of position on postflop unless they happen to be in the blinds.

Because of this, you must carefully select what hands you wish to play.

To illustrate this a little further, let’s imagine we would like to open 66 from UTG. To some, this may be a fairly standard open.

But consider the probability of that any one of these players has a strong or premium hand of 77+, AJs+, KQs, AQo+, KQo

This range represents 7.5% off all hands, and the probability of a player having one of these hands is shown below:

So there is almost 50% chance some has a hand that is at least flipping with 66 and in many cases dominating. Pocket 66s only has 37% chance of winning if you were to go all-in versus that range, however, you will realise a lot less of that equity due to the likelihood of high card to your pair making it very difficult to play.

Equity realisation is a complicated subject which I won’t go into detail here on but PokerNerve has a great article on the topic which you can read here.

So the key takeaway:

Moving clockwise around the table, the next player to act is referred to as “under the gun plus one” or UTG+1. This seat plays very similarly to the UTG and hence these two positions are grouped into early position poker strategy.

Since there are only seven players left to act when opening from UTG+1, you can play slightly more hands. A typical opening range on a full ring table will be approximately 9% from UTG and 10% from UTG +1 which looks something like this:

Poker Small Blind E Big Blind Brackets

These images are from a piece of software called Equilab which you can download for free here. This software allows you to save your ranges for later, turn percentage opens into actual hand ranges and calculate your equity versus another hand or range.

Middle position

The next position category is middle position. From here you should still be playing fairly conservatively, however, you can open a few more combos of hands when compared to UTG since two players have already folded meaning it is less likely:

• That you will come up against a strong hand
• That you will be forced to play out of position postflop

MP+1 should also be played in a similar manner to MP, albeit with slightly looser starting hand requirements.

A typical opening range will be approximately 12% from MP and 16% for MP +1 as shown below:

Late position

Poker Small Blind Big Blind Rules

Following MP is late position which represents the three seats of hijack, cutoff and button.

We use individual names for each of these positions since they play quite differently and as a result, there is quite a large difference in strategy needed.

Although this might seem like a lot to take in at the moment, with all the different seat names and acronyms, you will have no problem remembering once you get in some practice. It completely automatic to me now and I don’t even have to think about it.

Hijack will play more hands than MP with a 19% opening range but it’s not until the cutoff and the button where we really start to open our range up. For example, in the cutoff we will like to open 26% or so of hands whereas on the button (OTB), we will open closer to 45% of hands if you are facing suitable players in the blinds.

Here is what the button opening rang might look like:

The reason for the stark adjustment in starting hands is because there are so few players left to act (either 3 for the cutoff, or 2 for the button) and if we do get action, we will be in position against the blinds.

Due to the fact that you will always act last on the button when playing postflop, it is considered the best and is almost always the most profitable seat on a poker table.

The blinds

The blinds are a slightly different kettle of fish. Firstly, players in the blind have to put in a small “fee” before seeing their cards i.e. there are putting in money blind into the pot, hence the name.

Secondly, when playing from the blinds, you will mostly be reacting to other player’s raises as opposed to make them yourself. This forces you to use a different strategy than we have been using up until now – you must now start calling much more often, particularly from the big blind.

Poker Small Blind E Big Blind Auditions

The Small Blind is the worst seat (as you will always act out of position and act with the least amount of information) and the Big Blind is the least profitable seat on the table as you have to put a whole big blind into the pot without even seeing your cards.

The two redeeming qualities of the big blind are that we already have 1 bb invested into the pot which means despite our positional disadvantage versus all seats except the SB, we will usually have the opportunity to “close the action” by calling and seeing the flop.

Closing the action means that we are guaranteed to realise some of our equity (potentially allowing us to hit a piece of the flop). The same can’t be said for the SB where if we call a raise, the Big Blind has the opportunity to reraise us with a squeeze and put us in a tough spot.

6-max tables generally play much more aggressively and in many ways can be thought of by just simply removing the first three seats from a full ring table.

However, the naming convention also changes somewhat i.e. the first player to act in a 6max table is still called under the gun (and not MP+1 as would be the case in a full ring table).

The naming convention for a 6max table is shown below.

For the difference between a fullring and 6max table strategy, see my article here on this topic.

Note that in a 10 handed table there is also an UTG+2 added before MP starts. In this case, UTG should play slightly tighter and on a 9-handed table.

Poker Position Hand Chart:

Here is an example of how we would play pairs in a 6max game:

As shown, we should almost always play pairs since they are one of the best starting hand types. But with the other hand types, it is less cut and dry.

To receive your full free 6max & full ring starting hand chart, Click here for 6max and here for fullring.

Check out the Common Poker Mistakesto keep learning.

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