"When you're out of position, you want to end the hand as early as possible."
[note that "end the hand" is probably better understood as "end the action"]
This has always made sense to me. Position is an advantage for the obvious reason that poker is an information game; thus, being able to act after others nets you more information, allowing you to make better decisions.
The application of the above quote, then, is that in ending the hand sooner, you have to make less decisions out of position.
An NLHE example: a good player opens in late position to 3 bb, and you three-bet from the blinds with QQ (or something similar) to something like 10 bb. He then reraises to 35 bb. Here is a spot where you have a choice between flat-calling and reraising (let's take fold out of the equation).
If the stacks are 100 bb, I think this is a clear push according to the above quote. Why give your opponent an opportunity to outplay you on the flop for a big 70 bb pot when you can neutralize his advantage of position by ending the hand right away? Similarly, if you were the villain in the hand, you may have chosen not to reraise to 35 bb, and instead see a flop, because you want to be able to use your advantage for as long as possible (of course, this depends on the hands, etc.).
But it gets trickier when the stacks are deeper. When the stacks are quite deep, let's say 300 bb, you have a very tough decision with QQ here. The pot will be 70 bb after your call, and you will both still have 265 bb behind. You can possibly reraise to 100 bb, but if your opponent now flat-calls, you are essentially playing blind on every flop, being committed to push, and if your opponent is good, he can exploit this pretty hard (I realize this is a complex equation with hand ranges and implied odds, etc., please ignore the trivial details of this particular example). So here, I think flat-calling with QQ is better.
But yet this contradicts the positional advice!
So I hope some of you see my dilemma -- playing out of position can be super tricky! Applying it to PLO8, I am struggling with when to reraise preflop with strong hands versus when to flat-call with them. So please share what factors you think contribute most (how deep/shallow the stacks need to be, how strong your hand needs to be, what tendencies your opponents need to have, etc etc etc) to your decision in general out-of-position situations.
Thanks in advance,
AseemStatistics: Posted by akishore — Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:18 pm
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