How to Play the Middle and Late Positions in No Limit Holdem

Hey losers, I’m glad you’re back to check out my advice on basic positional strategy. Without knowing how to make the right plays depending on your position, you will continue to lose over and over like the loser you are. Follow my advice however, and you may surprize yourself with how often you start winning. My first article talked about the overall strategy and how positions work in No Limit Holdem. It also covered basic pre-flop strategy for everyone. My second article focused more on early play, including the Blinds and the tricky Under The Gun position. Today I am going to discuss the Middle and Late positions. Once again I’ll post a screenshot showing all the positions, so you can keep up. If you don’t know what any of this means, you NEED TO LEARN NOW.

Purple is the Late Position, Orange is Early, and Blue is the Middle Position. This is a screenshot from PKR, the best looking real money poker game out there. Use code JERK1000 when you make a big deposit, and they will match you 100% up to $1000. If you are making a smaller deposit, use JERK100 instead to get 100% bonus up to $600. The middle position is tricky in that it has some of the disadvantages of the early positions, and some of the advantages of the later positions. Middle players get to see the actions of the early players, but there are still a few players acting behind them. In the pre-Flop round, middle position players have a few more hands they can open raise with, since there is a smaller chance someone in a later position will have a better hand (for instance in my position in the picture above, if the first 3 people before me fold, there are still 6 more players that may have a better hand than I do). Overall though, the list of raisable hands is not much longer than that of early position players. After the flop, the relative position is most prone to change for the middle players. As an example, using the same example as above: if the first 3 players fold, I call, and nobody but the blinds call, I am now in the Late Position, and have advantage over the other players (because they have to act before me for the Flop, Turn, and River).

Late Position Strategy: Cut-Off and The Button

With the exception of the pre-flop round, the Button is the last player to act on all rounds. Therefore, he has the greatest positional advantage of all, since he can see how everyone has acted before he has to act. The player to the right of the Button is the Cut-Off, and as you can imagine this is a good place to be as well, especially when the Button folds. Late Position players with a drawing hand will have more chances to raise for free cards, since they are able to check on the Turn when acting last. If an Early Position player attempted that strategy, it wouldn’t work since they have to act first on the next round. Another strategy Late Position players have access to is being able to get a free showdown by doing a semi-bluff. To do this, they would raise on the Turn with the intention of checking on the River for free if their hand didn’t improve, or betting if it did. I’ll be talking more about particular strategies every day, so be sure to check back often. To stay up to date, be sure to subscribe to my RSS, or to my Newsletter, or follow me on Twitter.