I once read a really useful piece of advice that has most influenced and shaped my understanding of position:

"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,

Aseem

i'm not going to bother discussing the pfrr with AAxx (usually with a wheel card) when you can get a ton of your stack in since i think most people have their own idea of how to play this type of situation in their specific gaming context. other than that....


deep stack (e.g., 300bb), i will basically never reraise pre-flop (no, not even AA23ds). the reason for this is that regardless of my holding, villain can call with really good implied odds and position. theoretically i would prefer to reraise hands like AA23ds all the time, but that gives away too much information about my hand unless i mix in a lot of other non-AAxx and non-A2pp (pp=pocket pair) types of hands.

plo8 is a post-flop game, so why not just play it post-flop with deep stacks? some people will say that the pfrr will help you get your stack in post-flop when you hit. i think this is not necessary and possibly not correct. it's not necessary since i think the instances you actually need the pfrr to get it all-in are actually quite rare (e.g., two big hands almost always get it in on the flop or turn). it may be incorrect due to the fact that you may very well be getting your money in bad if it all goes in after you pfrr (esp. if it goes in on the flop) another reason it may be incorrect is that oop players have tools to help them get the money in that are, imo, more effective than a pfrr (see below).

i've mentioned before that i think that the primary tools of an oop player are the cr and the first-in (semi-)bluff. i much prefer these to a pfrr. to be fair, most people grossly misuse these tools if they use them at all (e.g., they only cr with the nuts or they don't bluff anything close to optimal frequency and therefore are incredibly easy to read and/or outplay*).

with the typical 50-100bb effective stacks (often villains are short), i'll pfrr loose opponents with a wide range of decent hands if i think i can isolate them and either: 1) make them fold on the flop, or 2) make them get their money in bad. if i don't think i can isolate, i don't rr. against tighter players i usually on pfrr with AA2x since (at 100s and lower) i'm often looking at another AAxx hand or an A2xx hand. at higher limits i almost never reraise unless we're rapidly getting towards all-in pf. the reason why is that people will call you and put you on AAxx or A2xx (whether you have that or not), and will often make plays at you and/or induce you to get your money in bad. in order to prevent this, you have to pfrr with a wide range, but if you do that, you're giving most non-wt villains a huge positional edge.



* here's a small example of what i mean by optimal bluffing frequency (see ToP for more info). if a flop comes QQ9 and i'm in ep and called a pfr, i'll sometimes bet out at this flop . this proportion that i bet is based on optimal bluffing frequency and the tendecies of my specific opponent. the interesting thing is that i don't care if you call or fold (over a large sample), since you lose sklansky bucks with whatever play you make. better yet, some clowns think they're clever when they float me on the flop and then try to steal on the turn. well, i also have a ratio (based on villain's aggression frequency) that i check my big hands precisley for these kinds of situations so that i can cr the floater on the turn or value donkbet the river. fwiw, i certainly haven't optimized the math (if that's really possible), but i mix it up enough so that by the time you figure out what i have, you already have a lot of chips in the middle. the compares to most people who either: 1) always slowplay big flopped hands (yeah, that smooth call from oop on a janky paired board REALLY tricked me), 2) bet into pf raiser WAY too often on scary flops and are therefore easy to outplay (note that it helps to pfr a wide range so that no flop is "safe" to a potential stealer), or 3) jam it all in on every half-assed semi-bluff/draw they can. a lot of the so-called "aggressive" players at the higher stakes are guilty of the last two, but they are lucky that most opponents don't know how to effectively counter these kinds of aggression.