Top 5 Tips for Playing Out of Position & Surprise Your Opponents
Playing out of position can be tricky. The mantra that the position is power in poker exists for a reason. When you’re last to act in a hand, you get so much advantage. You can see what everybody does before you act, can control the size of the pot much better, and your decisions are significantly easier.
However, it is impossible to avoid playing out of position. While you may try to reduce the number of these situations, at times you’ll simply have to deal with them.
The good news is that there are ways to significantly improve your out of position poker strategy and reduce your opponents’ positional advantage. We bring you the top five tips for playing out of position, and once you start implementing these in your game, you won’t have to wait long before you see an uptick in your results.
Tip #1: 3-Bet More When Playing Out of Position
You can’t influence your position at the table. It rotates naturally, so that all players get to play in all positions, leveling the field and ensuring the game is fair.
What you can control, however, is the initiative in the hand, and you should be particularly eager to seize that initiative when you lack the positional advantage.
This means that your out of position poker strategy should entail a fairly high percentage of 3-bets. By doing so, you’ll become an aggressor in the hand and put your opponent in a defensive position. While this doesn’t negate their positional advantage, it makes it harder for them to control the play.
When playing from the small blind in particular, you should have almost no calls in your range. Many experienced poker players adopt a 3-bet or fold strategy from this position.
There are a few main reasons for this approach:
- You’re not closing the action, as the big blind still gets to act behind, and if you flat call, you give them an incentive to squeeze.
- You’ll always be the first to act across all future streets, which makes it hard to realize your equity even when you flop a big hand.
- By allowing the original raiser to have the initiative, you’ll be playing a guessing game with your mediocre hands, allowing them to dictate the betting action and sizing.
By 3-betting instead of calling, you eliminate quite a few of these problems, getting rid of the big blind and taking charge of the betting action.
Of course, quite often you won’t even have to see the flop, as your 3-bet will force the original raiser to fold, and you’ll pick up the pot without any further resistance.
Tip #2: Size Up Your Out of Position 3-Bets
When playing out of position, you don’t want to just 3-bet more frequently. You also need to size your re-raises so that it makes it harder for your opponent to call. In position, you can go with a smaller sizing, so if your opponent opens to three big blinds, you can make it eight or nine. Out of position, however, you need to ramp it up to closer to 12 or 13. This achieves two goals:
- It increases your chances of winning the pot right then and there.
- You build a larger pot, allowing you to put more pressure on flops, turns, and rivers.
By using a larger preflop sizing, you’re creating a situation where all future bets will be larger as well. Thus, your opponent’s positional advantage is diminished, as they can’t call you down with a wide range of hands.
This out-of-position strategy may feel uncomfortable at first because many players new to the game feel like they need to preserve their chips, and this looks like the complete opposite. However, in the long run, you’ll be losing much more by just calling and playing passively out of position.
Don’t be afraid to size up your 3-bets and play big pots with strong hands. It will catch your opponents off guard and make you tough to play against. It may even help stop other players from raising as much when you’re in the blinds.
Tip #3: Increase Your Check-Raise Frequency
Check-raise is one of the most powerful weapons you have playing out of position, and it is severely under-utilized, especially at lower stakes.
This strategy can work really well in situations where you just call a raise before the flop, which will happen often when defending your big blind.
Unlike the small blind, you’ll be calling with a decent percentage of hands from the big blind, as you’ll be getting decent pot odds and will be closing the action. Thus, you don’t have to 3-bet as often before the flop, but that doesn’t mean you’ll remain passive for the remainder of the hand.
Many players make this mistake , where they’ll check-call their opponent all the way to the river, giving them full control of the betting action. This approach allows them to realize their full equity and gives them complete control of their hand.
By adding a check-raise into the mix, you’ll flip the tables and win quite a few pots that you could never win if you were playing passively.
To implement this strategy, you first need to learn what constitutes a good check-raise opportunity. In the simplest of terms, this happens when the flop favors your big blind range, but your opponent decides to continuation bet anyway.
For example, you defend against a UTG 3x open and the flop comes 5♥ 7♠ 9♠. You check, and they fire a half-pot continuation bet.
This board is much more favorable for your range. You can have a straight, all sets, and all two pair combos. The UTG raiser, on the other hand, won’t have many hands that coordinate well with this flop. They will have all over-pairs, but on a coordinated board like this, even pocket aces won’t feel too comfortable facing a lot of aggression.
The second question is, what types of hands should you be check-raising with? Besides the obvious candidates, i.e., two pair and better, there are many strong bluffing combos, such as:
- A pair plus a straight draw: a hand like 56, for example
- Combo draws, i.e. straight & flush draw: 4♠ 6♠, for example
- Nut flush draws
- Backdoor draws with over-cards: for example, JhTh
This isn’t to say that you should check-raise these hands every single time. Like with everything else in poker, a good balance is key to success. There is nothing wrong with just calling with a flush draw, but you also want to raise with it fairly often to keep your opponent on their toes.
Sometimes, you’ll win a hand on the flop when your opponent misses completely. In other situations, they may have a strong enough hand to stick around, but you can continue betting on many scare cards on the turn, putting a lot of pressure.
If you raise with a flush draw and the turn is the 8♦, so the board reads 5♥ 7♠ 9♠ 8♦, you did not improve, but if you continue betting, it will be very hard for them to continue even with hands as strong as QQ, KK, and even AA.
They can’t see your hole cards, and that board smashes your range, so you can and should take advantage of the situation.
#4 C-Bet Less Frequently Out of Position
So far, we’ve talked about situations where you are defending against the raise, but to really learn how to play out of position, you also need to consider the spots where you are the original raiser.
For example, you open from the cutoff, and the dealer calls. As you proceed to the flop, you’ll need to tame your aggression and lower your c-bet frequency.
This is a bit of a strange dynamic, but the reason why you’ll want to c-bet only around 20-25% of the time is twofold:
- You are controlling the pot’s size.
- You are protecting your checking range across different boards.
The first reason is pretty self-explanatory. When you are out of position and working with very little information, you need to be mindful of the pot size. A dealer’s calling range here will be quite wide, so you have to proceed cautiously.
The second one is a bit more complex.
There will be many flops that are better for your range as the original raiser, but you’ll still want to check a high percentage of the time. You are doing this to protect your range, so that your opponent can’t simply bet every time you check and expect to win the pot.
This is especially true for ace-high boards. You can often check on these types of flops, with the intention of check-calling or even check-raising with your strongest hands. By structuring your game plan in this fashion, you’ll freeze the in-position opponent, and they’ll be less likely to take a stab at the pot with any random two cards.
If you only continue with your strong hands and check when you miss the flop, you’ll be easy to play against, and good players will pick up on this tendency fairly quickly. So, instead, change your strategy so that you have plenty of good hands that can easily continue against the opponent’s flop bet.
#5 Know When to Seize the Initiative Playing Out of Position
Not all players will mindlessly continuation bet on all flops. Good opponents will recognize spots where they’re likely to face a check-raise and will not give you an opportunity. Instead, they’ll check back on flops that favor your range and take a free card.
These are the situations where you can utilize what’s known as the turn probe to seize the initiative in the pot.
Going back to our scenario where the flop comes 5♥ 7♠ 9♠ and you check to the UTG raiser, let’s say they check behind. You can still win this pot by pure aggression if you don’t connect with the board.
To recognize good opportunities to take a stab at the pot, you need to think about how likely a turn card is to help your opponent. If the turn is an ace or a face card, it’s probably not a great card to represent, as it will often help improve the raiser’s hand.
If, however, it is another small or board-pairing card, this is your signal to take a stab.
After your opponent checks on the flop, you can be pretty sure they don’t have a strong hand. They are likely to hold overcards, looking to improve or reach a cheap showdown. That type of hand can’t take too much heat.
So, you can fire out a bet on favorable turn cards and deny them their equity. You need to size up in these spots, making it at least three-quarters of the pot. If your bet is too small, your opponent can still call with their over-cards to try and improve or potentially take the pot away from you on the river.
For this out of position strategy to be efficient, you need to be very aware of the board texture and hand ranges from different positions. The idea is to attack on turns that are unlikely to improve things for your opponent after the action checks through on the flop, but can reasonably be favorable for you.
When your turn probe gets called, you’ll have another decision to make on the river. If you don’t improve, do you give up, or do you continue betting?
This decision depends on a number of factors, such as:
- Could the river card have helped your opponent?
- Does the river card work well with your perceived range?
- Do you have any reads/stats (does the opponent call too much)?
If you arrive at the river with a hand that has no showdown value in a situation where your opponent is unlikely to hold a very strong hand, you should err on the side of aggression. Your worst bluffs that get to the river unimproved are your best barreling candidates.
Of course, if you know the player on the other side to be a bit of a calling station, it’s fine to give up sometimes. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to make up the lost EV against these players in situations where you have a strong hand, and you can bet big, knowing they’ll call you down light.
Conclusion: Start Improving Your Out of Position Poker Strategy Today
These five tips will help you significantly improve your win rates out of position, whether you play in loose live games or online games on sites like
BC Poker
. These strategies are universal and will work well across the board.
Naturally, you’ll need some practice to figure out what works best in your particular games, and it will take some time to become comfortable playing this way. It is worth the time and effort, though, because developing a strong out of position strategy will make you a much tougher opponent and someone other players will try to avoid as much as possible.
