texas travel – Texas Hold’em – Winning With Position

Written by admin on December 12, 2009 – 5:11 pm

Texas Hold’em – Winning With Position

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 basically 4 positions in Texas Hold’em. These are early position, middle position, late position, and the blinds. Most people consider the blinds late position pre-flop and early post flop, but I prefer to list them as their own separate position for the sake of simplicity. Let’s look at the 4 positions and how they should affect your game. Keep in mind, these are fundamental rules and specific circumstances will change the way you play hands in different situations.

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 is the player on the button and the player just to the right of the button (called the cut-off position). In Texas Hold’em, late position is king. Here is where you get to open up your game a bit. You can add a much bigger range of starting hands to your arsenal. In fact, if the table folds around to you in late position, you should be raising with any two cards that have good post flop potential. Suited J-10, 88, and suited A9 all start to look really good in late position. You have already seen most of the players act, so you get to use their actions against them. You also get to act after them in the later betting rounds, which gives you an opportunity to outplay them.

One of the most difficult positions to play in Texas Hold’em is the small and big blinds. You already have chips committed to the pot before it is your turn to act and everyone is trying to raise your blind. The g
1000
ood news is that you often have the correct pot odds to call raises, since you already have in the pot. The bad news is that unless you are really really good at playing from the blinds, your position will put you at too big a disadvantage to be able to outplay your opponent post flop. In less you can see a flop cheaply, or have premium hole cards, I would fold.

Texas Hold’em is really all about position. Have a little patience and play according to your position and you can be a winner at the Hold’em table. Good luck!

By: Steve Schafer

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

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

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Americans are very mobile. They are willing to move to new areas that offer well-paid jobs and low cost of living. The US population has a net gain of roughly about 1% annually in the last 30 years to about 301 million people in 2007. However, the increase is uneven, i.e. in some areas the population increases rapidly while some areas the population decreases. As a commercial real estate investor, you want to invest in a growing and/or stable area to capture high rents and potential appreciation. Investing in declining areas may offer strong income now but potential for appreciation is slim and it may be difficult to sell the property later on.

As Americans move around, there are 3 major patterns of migration: from Snowbelt to Sunbelt states, from the coasts to inland, and from big cities to the suburbs. On top of those 3 patterns, there is a demographic impact of the Baby Boomers.

Migration from Snowbelt to Sunbelt States

Snowbelt states, e.g. Michigan, Ohio, and Philadelphia tend to have high concentration of heavy industry: steel, auto, etc. These states have lost jobs due to foreign competition from Asia where the labor costs are much lower. As a result, the population in many Sunbelt states has continued to decline.

Migration from the Coasts to Inland

About 153 million Americans are living within 50 miles from the coastline. They are moving from big cities along the coasts, e.g. San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. Inland areas in Sacramento, Riverside/San Bernardino counties, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte experience very rapid growth. There are 3 main reasons for the migration:

Many companies and people are moving into these inland cities to take advantage of the lower housing costs and higher quality of living. A software engineer working in the suburb of Dallas will get paid a little bit less compared to working in Silicon Valley. However, his home in Coppell, TX is about 60% less expensive and 2 times the size.
The San Francisco/San Jose lost about 10% of the high-tech jobs after the dot com bubble.
The city of New Orleans lost about 50% of its residents after the hurricane Katrina as people moved to higher grounds.

Migration of middleclass from big cities to the suburbs

Within various metros, the high income families tend to move from the cities to the master-planned suburbs looking for newer, bigger homes and better local amenities. This is evidenced in

Dallas metro: the population is either declining or growing slowly in Dallas within loop 635 while in Plano, Coppell, Keller and Grapevine it is growing rapidly. The people in these suburban towns are also more affluent.
Houston metro: the population is also declining or growing slowly within Houston. However; in Sugar Land, Pearland, Katy, The Woodlands, and Spring the population is growing rapidly.
Atlanta metro: the Northern part of Atlanta, e.g. Duluth, Alpharetta, Lawrenceville is experiencing phenomenal growth. The median house hold income in these areas is between $65-110K compared with $25-45K within the city of Atlanta where the population is declining.

The Impact of Baby Boomers

The Baby Boomers consist of about 77.5 million people who were born between 1946 and 1964. During this time, the US population increased by over 50 million people and grew an average of 1.7% annually instead of the typically less than 1%. Starting from the next few years, these baby boomers will be heading toward retirement. One or all of the following will happen:

Many will move to retirement communities in the Sunbelt states.
They will realize that (for those who wait till the last minutes) they need another source of income to supplement their limited social security income. They also discover that commercial properties offer strong cash flow which meets their investment objectives. It’s likely that the demand for commercial real properties, especially ones with NNN leases will be even higher in the near future as a result.
They will need even more medicine. This means Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS should do well. They should continue to be good tenants as they always have. The properties they lease should hold value and continue to be in high demand especially in stable and growing areas.

David V. Tran is the President and Chief Investment Advisor at Transmercial (formerly eFunding, Inc.), a commercial real estate & loan brokerage company in San Jose, CA. His website is http://www.transmercial.com He may be contacted at (408) 288-5500. Transmercial does business in all 50 states. He is the #1 US commercial real estate expert author. David currently offers 3 FREE real estate investment seminars: