A while a go i was reading a book about poker and it showed a list of hands based on position, i don't remember the book nor the hands, but the question remains, does your hand matters based on position? If so, why? Say, for example what makes a pair of 4 better in late position than early? Why should it matters if we don't know what possible hands are out there until we see the preflop bets

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From the first position at an 8 handed table, if we raise, there are 7 other people who might pick up a big pair and reraise us. Further, playing in early position, it is likely that if someone were to simply call our raise they would enjoy a positional advantage throughout the hand as we are forced to act first. When you act last, say if you are on the button, you get the advantage of seeing what everyone else is doing first, and so a pair of fours or any other holding is more valuable when you are in later position. If you are opening from the button then your two remaining opponents will be acting first postflop and also just have a random hand at this point so you may be able to steal the blinds.

In Stud this concept is less important because position alternates throughout the hand when people ace or pair up.

So, would you say its wise to throw my pair of 4s is somebody is to raise on the preflop? Im talking about a small raise of course, i mean, there's still chance to hit trips or something.

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You want to play more hands in position and as such should be playing a tighter hand range when out of position.

Your question about pocket 4s is too vague. There is a lot of information that needs to be gathered and processed prior to making any decision at the poker table. Also, I think this question leads to a lot of tangents which aren't all that meaningful at this point in the early stages of learning poker. Right now you need to focus on POSITION, POSITION, POSITION. Try to play hands in position. Only play premium hands from early position until you gain much more experience.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind

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If you have AA utg, you're going to be firing multiple barrels. Guy on the button has with 2 pair just has to call you down, shove/re-raise the river. Got a draw from EP???? Against any decent opponent your not going to be able to exercise any pot control or get a free card. If you through your hand histories you'll fins numerous occasions where you've stacked off oop with AA/KK vs a set of 4's/some funky two pair combo.



I went through a bit of a stretch where I only seemed to be getting good hands in early/mid position and was making more than I was on the button, its probably evening out now though.

Generally I would say yes, if somebody raises you should fold 44, especially if your are both in early or middle position. You are a long-shot to hit your set (7.5:1 against) and it could get three bet behind you which would be unfortunate especially from the perspective of having not yet called the bet (you would obviously not cold call with 44). But this is better discussed in the context of a particular hand history.

Pre-flop, most hands get the bulk of their EV from stealing the blinds. Indeed, poker is fundamentally about winning the the dead money. Very few hands have an EV of greater than 1.5bb, so you only want to open hands that have a good chance of stealing the blinds, but that will still do OK if someone calls. If you're UTG, it's very unlikely that you'll steal the blinds with hands like 44, as so many players are still to act. You'll often get called (or 3-bet) by someone that has position on you, and often has a better hand too, and that will mean you end up losing money.
If there is a decent chance that you will get called/raised by a better hand, and end up with less money than you started with, you should fold pre. When you're on the button, by contrast, most of the table has already folded. A hand like 44 is suddenly a profitable open, because not only does your raise only need to get through two players, but it will generally get called by a wider/weaker range, meaning it's profitable to play it.

That would be highly game dependent.

Go check your tracker. How many hands have a winrate of more than 150bb/100? For many players, it's just TT+/AK/AQs. Every other hand would rather win the blinds uncontested than get called, because a successful blind steal is worth 1.5bb. When you get called and you have a "non-premium", you're just winning a portion of the dead money in the long run.

That's a really "interesting" way of thinking about it. When I valuate something, I valuate it at the decision point, not at the outcome. If folds were a forgone conclusion then you could valuate it at the outcome I suppose.

As an extreme theoretical example, assume for a second that the big blind will play all playable hands for a preflop raise of 100 big blinds or less. Would it be profitable to raise to 101 big blinds in order to steal? Of course not. The more you have to raise preflop to get folds, the less profitable the steal is. The wider range of hands that villains play, the less profitable the steal is.

In another extreme example, assume that villain 3bets shoves all opens. The more aggressive the blinds, the less profitable the steal is.

Then of course you could have a game that sees a flop practically 100% of the time. This is quite common in Omaha. Obviously, there is no value in stealing if a steal will never work.

I literally have no clue what you're trying to say here.

Stealing blinds is not necessarily profitable in all games.

You seem to be missing the fundamental point that there is no incentive to play any hand (apart from the nuts) if the blinds don't exist. The only reason to VPIP with any hand is because you expect to pick up a portion of the dead money (either immediately pre-flop, or with your post-flop play).
The bottom of your range expects to break even. (e.g. you raise to 3bb, you play post-flop and - on average - you get back the money you invested, so you finish with whatever you started with. In that case, the 1.5bb ends up in someone's else's stack). The top of your range expects to win a bit more than just the dead money. (e.g. you raise with aces, get called pre, get called on the flop and then villain folds on the turn and you made 7bb of profit). The vast majority of playable hands have an expectation of between 0 and 1.5bb.
All you are doing when you play against an equally skilled player is chopping up the dead money. You play a hand because you think you can win a share of the 1.5bb sitting out there, and villain plays his hand because he thinks he can win a share for himself. That's fundamentally all that poker is: a fight for the blinds.
To go back to the thread title, being in position greatly increases your chances of picking up the biggest share of the blinds, so that's why more hands are playable in late position.

Arty right as usual.

That sounds good in a theoretical sense if you are playing against robots.

However, it's simply not the case in a practical sense when playing against people. For instance, if a game was 0/0 blinds and it folds to me in the HJ. I have T9 I'm going to bet an appropriate amount based on stack sizes and if the recreational players in the blinds have a hand they want to play then they will call me. My incentive is getting to play a very playable hand postflop in position against a less skilled opponent that will call with a wide range of hands. My opponent's incentive is the money I have put in the pot as well as the fact that he has a hand that he wants to play (perhaps for the challenge, perhaps for the fun, perhaps because it's boring not to play).

The latter is very key. The softer the game, the more money you will make postflop rather than via stealing blinds.

This is all dependent on the skill differential between you and the other players in the game.

Please find me a game with a table full of players that are anywhere close to as skilled as me and tell me where it is so that I can avoid it like the plague.

And even if they are equally skilled, if you have position then you are chopping up a higher percentage of the money.

No, no. It really isn't. That may be what it is in some games where there are very small margins but poker is about so much more than that.

No, being in position gives you more information than your opponent on the flop/turn/river. Poker is a game of incomplete information and when information asymmetry exists, the player with the most information has an advantage over their opponent(s). This advantage can often be quite great.

Often but far from always.

He should write a book about it. Maybe you could co-author it and dgiharris could write the forward.

0/0 games do not exist, but there are games that are essentially 0/0. For instance, last year at the Wynn 5/T game when Andy Beal bought in for 70k and the other players bought in to cover him, that is really no different than a 0/0 game. There is no incentive for anyone to steal $15 in that game. Ditto for no-cap 1/2 and 1/3 games that exist.

Also, as I stated previously there are some games that go to a flop practically every hand. There really is no reason to have blinds for many Omaha games aside from the fact that it allows you to pot it. People want to build pots with their hands, period (also preflop equities run closer). There is no incentive to steal $7 in dead money in a game that is more akin to 10/20NL than it is to 2/5.

That's not even mentioning LHE (which I don't play, so I didn't mention).

What about it?

I have no disagreement about that. But I think you'd have to be crushing at something like 20bb/100 to be making more than 1.5bb/hand with more than a handful of hands though. Most hands just aren't very profitable, and results with them are therefore subject to a ton of variance.

I take your point about some players being so terrible that they'd even call your raise in a game with no blinds (idiots gonna idiot). Those are the type of players that are so under-skilled that you can even open-limp with a wide range on the button, precisely because you expect to make more money from their post-flop errors than you would from trying to steal the blinds.
I check the flop. It's your move.

No need, this information is already available to anyone who cares enough to go and read it.

Yes there is. The incentive is $15.

But no poker player would be happy making a mere $15 per hand? So no incentive after all...

In deep stacked games the EV of seeing flops vs inferior opponents is much higher than the EV of stealing blinds. In games where stack depths are deep your financial interest is to play pots postflop rather than stealing crumbs here and there.

There was a player in that Wynn 5/T game that won $40k+ that session. One would need to successful steal blinds over 2600 times to make that much money at 5/T. At 25 hands/hr that's going to be pretty difficult. If you are playing in that game you would be costing yourself a lot of EV if your main goal was to steal blinds rather than play pots postflop.