When playing Texas Hold’em, one of the most important factors to consider is your table position. It is also one of the most overlooked elements in a new player’s game. Your position in poker is where you are sitting relative to the “button”. As the button rotates every hand, so does your position. Whether or not you decide to play a hand and how you play it should always be heavily influenced be your position.

There are four basic positions in Hold’em: Late position, middle position, early position and the blinds. The blinds are often lumped in with “early position”, but since they are played a little differently, I gave them their own category. The following guidelines are just that – guidelines. There are many more factors to consider when playing Hold’em, but you should always default to the following rules. Here are the four positions and how they relate to your game play:

Early position in Hold’em is the two positions just to the left of the big blind (BB). This is when you need to be the most careful. Before the flop (first set of community cards) is dealt early position players are first to act. That means that everyone gets to see what you do before they have to do anything. You should petty much stick to playing premium hands in early position. Playing marginal hands here can easily wind up with you trapped in a hand against a monster. I recommend raising with premium made hands (AA, KK, QQ) in early position and raising or limp/re-raising (limping in and re-raising a single raiser) with premium drawing hands (AK, AQ). You should almost always continuation bet the flop unless you know it hit your opponent.

Middle position in Hold’em describes the next two players to act after EP. MP is played a lot like EP, except that you can open up your starting hand selection just a little. Add JJ and suited AJ to the mix here, but be prepared to bow out if things get scary. If an EP player raises, you should fold all but premium hands. If an EP player limps, be careful. He could easily be limping with AK or AQ.

Late position defines the last two players to act. The Button is the last player to act before the blinds pre-flop and the last to act on all the subsequent rounds. In Hold’em, the button gets to dictate the action. You can open your game way up to include just about any two cards that have a good chance of connecting on the flop. You still need to be mindful of the action in front of you, but if there is none, you can raise with all kinds of hands like KQ suited, A-10 suited, 99, etc. If it is folded to you on the button (or in the cut-off, for that matter) you should be raising at least 75% of the time, no matter what cards you have. Since you get to see the other players act before you do, anyone who calls your raise will be at a disadvantage post flop.

The blinds can be really really tough to play correctly, and a lot of novice players don’t. As a rule of thumb, I would say to take down the pot pre-flop or drop your hand like a rock. It’s true that you have odds to call many raises from the big blind, but the disadvantage of your position post flop is not usually worth the effort (or the chips). Unless you have a monster, I say let it go.

Texas Hold’em is really a waiting game. Be patient and play your position. If you follow these strategies you could be well on your way towards winning at Texas Hold’em. Now “Let’s shuffle up and deal!

Before you play another tournament, make sure you head on over to Steve’s Poker Strategies site for more great poker tips.