Anyone who plays Hold’em has heard some version of it: position is everything, and with position even a fish can take you apart. (A fish is usually a player who is losing money badly, though people use it about themselves too.)
The trouble is that “position” is doing the work of two different ideas at once, and running the two together is where beginners get stuck.
This post covers position end to end: where you are sitting, who acts first, and how that decides which hands you should be playing. If you are not yet solid on the four stages of dealing and betting, read what Texas Hold’em is first and come back.
There are two kinds of position:
- Absolute position: your seat at the table — small blind (SB), big blind (BB), under the gun (UTG), cutoff (CO), button (BTN).
- Relative position: whether you act after your opponent or before — in position (IP), out of position (OOP).
1. Absolute Position: Seats and the Order of Action
Absolute position is the order in which everyone acts within a hand, from the deal to the pot being pushed.
The cards are dealt starting from the small blind (SB), one card at a time clockwise, twice around, so everyone ends up with two hole cards.
The order of action has to be remembered in two halves:
- Preflop: starts from under the gun (UTG), the seat to the left of the big blind, and the big blind (BB) acts last — because the blinds already have chips in.
- Postflop: always starts from the small blind (SB) and moves clockwise.
That difference matters, and relative position leans on it constantly.
Six-Handed Table
Clockwise from the small blind:
| Order | Abbreviation | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SB | Small blind |
| 2 | BB | Big blind |
| 3 | UTG | Under the gun |
| 4 | MP / UTG+1 / HJ | Middle position, under the gun +1, hijack |
| 5 | CO | Cutoff |
| 6 | BTN / Dealer | Button, dealer |
Nine-Handed Table
Clockwise from the small blind:
| Order | Abbreviation | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SB | Small blind |
| 2 | BB | Big blind |
| 3 | UTG | Under the gun |
| 4 | UTG+1 | Under the gun +1 |
| 5 | UTG+2 | Under the gun +2 |
| 6 | LJ | Lojack |
| 7 | HJ | Hijack |
| 8 | CO | Cutoff |
| 9 | BTN / Dealer | Button, dealer |
What Separates Early, Middle and Late
Nobody reels off seat names at the table. In practice the seats get grouped into three, plus the blinds, which behave differently from all of them:
- Early position: UTG, UTG+1, UTG+2. First to act preflop, with a crowd of players still to speak.
- Middle position: LJ, HJ. Most of the players in front have folded already, but the CO and the BTN are still waiting behind you.
- Late position: CO, BTN. Nearly last to decide preflop, and postflop the BTN acts last of anyone at the table.
- The blinds: SB, BB. They work in reverse — last to act preflop, and the first two to act on every street after it.
The whole difference comes down to one sentence: when you act, how many players’ intentions are still unknown to you. Early position has to decide with five players yet to speak; late position gets to watch everyone else first.
2. Relative Position: IP and OOP
Absolute position is about where you are sitting. Relative position is about who acts first between you and the opponents still in the hand.
- In position (IP): you act after your opponent.
- Out of position (OOP): you act before your opponent.
Why Having Position Matters So Much
Hold’em is a game of asymmetric information, and whoever holds more of it has the better of things. When you have position — when you are the last to act — you get to sit back and watch your opponent perform first:
- He checks, which suggests he may have nothing, so you can bet and push him off it.
- He bets big, which suggests he may be strong, so you can fold and stop putting chips in.
Having position is like getting to see a classmate’s answers before you write your own. How is that going to lose?
A reminder: relative position is usually about postflop. Preflop the blinds make the big blind last to act; postflop the action always starts at the small blind and moves clockwise. So “acting late preflop” does not mean “in position postflop”.
Three Common Spots
All three assume the flop is heads-up, two players left:
Spot 1: under the gun vs. big blind (UTG vs. BB)
UTG is IP, the BB is OOP. Postflop the big blind has to act first, and UTG gets to see what he does before deciding.
Spot 2: under the gun vs. button (UTG vs. BTN)
UTG is OOP, the button is IP. UTG has to act very early preflop, but postflop the button is the last to act, every street, no exceptions — which is why everyone loves playing hands on the button, and why it is usually the seat you win the most money from.
Spot 3: small blind vs. big blind (SB vs. BB)
The SB is OOP, the BB is IP. This is the most common blind-defence matchup. The small blind acts first on every postflop street — always OOP, the worst seat at the table — while the big blind, against the small blind alone, is the one holding the advantage of acting last.
Quick Quiz
Cutoff against button today. Postflop, who is IP and who is OOP?
Think for three seconds before reading on.
Answer: the button (BTN) is IP and the cutoff (CO) is OOP.
Because the button sits immediately to the cutoff’s left, so as the action goes clockwise postflop the CO always acts first and the BTN follows.
One rule to keep: if your opponent is sitting to your right, you have position on him.
3. How Position Decides Which Hands to Play
“Why do I always lose with AJo?” “Something is wrong with this dealer, I have been bad-beaten all night!”
If those lines run through your head often, then as an engineer who plays poker I have to be blunt: stop blaming the dealer, your hand selection was probably wrong from the start.
Plainly put, it is often not bad luck, it is itchy fingers. Wanting to see a flop with anything, wanting to enter the pot from anywhere — the usual name for that behaviour is donating. It is especially visible live, where nobody has the patience to wait and every hand gets a “let’s just have a look”.
Your Range Is Simply “Which Hands You Decided to Play”
The most common beginner mistake is a frighteningly high VPIP. A7o is worth a go, JTs is suited and connected and has a dream in it, and even 68o might make two pair.
And which hands are worth playing is bound almost entirely to position.
Under the Gun: Five Players Still Behind You
UTG acts first preflop, with five players still to speak. Of course you can enter with a weak hand — call 1BB, raise to 2.5BB or 3BB, whatever — but the moment someone behind you 3-bets, that weak hand mostly has to go in the muck.
68o can make two pair or even a full house, but think it through: it hits far less often than it feels like it should, and long before it does you have paid too much for it.
The Button: Last to Act on Every Street After the Flop
The button is not the last to decide preflop, but postflop it acts last every time, which locks in absolute positional advantage — and naturally makes the range of playable hands far wider than UTG’s.
There is an even more extreme version: if everyone folds to the button and only the blinds are left, the hands you can play get much wider still, because most of the time you only need the two blinds to fold. The hand ends preflop and you take the blinds down. That is what people mean by stealing.
The Conclusion: The Earlier You Act, the Stronger Your Hand Has to Be
Put those two together and you get the classic ordering. From the strictest hand requirements to the loosest, roughly:
UTG > MP > CO > BTN > SB > BB
Worth noting why the blinds look so wide on that list: they have chips in already, so facing a raise they get pot odds to continue, which makes their defending ranges the widest at the table. But that is wide as in “cheap to see a flop”, not wide as in “easy to play” — because postflop you are almost always OOP.
Position does not stop mattering after the flop, either. Even holding QQ, when an ace comes on the flop, being in the big blind, under the gun or on the button leads to completely different ways of handling it — repricing your hand once the flop lands is a separate skill entirely.
If only one thing sticks, make it this: what your hand is worth depends on the seat you were dealt it in. The same AJo is a raise on the button and a fold under the gun, and that is not being conservative, that is arithmetic.
The fastest way to find which seat is leaking the most money is to go back through your own hand histories and split them by position. Which is exactly what RushCraft does — it takes your Rush & Cash hands apart by position, starting hand and line, and lets the numbers do the talking.
A note from the author: I have always wondered why there is so little Texas Hold’em teaching material in Chinese, with most of what exists stopping at definitions of basic terms. Maybe the worry is that teaching too many people spoils the player pool, or maybe it simply takes too much time and nobody can be bothered. The point of writing this is not to charge for it; mostly I hope the hours I put into it end up helping someone who is lost.