Middle Position
At the nine handed table, middle position is clearly the 4th, 5th and 6th players after the dealer. What about a standard ten handed table; where does that tenth player fit. Well in the most often given answer in poker-It Depends! If you are playing conservatively or if your table is very aggressive, you might consider designating the first four seats as early positions. A passive table would call for four middle position seats and if you are being aggressive then four late position seats might be your assessment. In any case there is nothing wrong and a lot right about using ‘early-middle’ and ‘middle-late’ for those in-between decisions.
The whole idea behind the use of position in your decisions is to play different hands in different situations. Clearly pocket aces (AA) play anywhere in Hold’em and a lot of hands play early, middle and late when your table is very passive and there is little to no pre-flop raising. So position is an adjustable evaluation based on lots of in the moment factors at your table. Let’s use pocket sevens (77) as our example.
In early position at a very aggressive table, you might just throw sevens away. If you are sure the hand will be raised the question is whether or not you are willing to play sevens out of position for more than one bet. If, however, your table is passive and you fairly sure no one will raise the opening call, then you can afford to play those small pocket pairs for just one bet.
Middle position has the advantage both of having information on the early position players who have acted before you and of being able to apply pressure to the later position players by raising the pot. A good middle position player is likely to be a good early and late position player; it just takes more skill to correctly play hands from middle position.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #28
