When playing poker, the button is the best position to be in. Positional advantage is crucial, and this helps you achieve that. If you utilize a poker tracking program or keep thorough records, you’ll know that the button is where the money is made.
The biggest benefit of acting from the button is watching your opponents’ moves before you have to make one yourself. This provides you an advantage over your opponents because you have access to data they lack. You have a significant advantage and can influence how the hand unfolds because you know more than your opponents.
If you want to make the most money from the button, there are three principles you should always follow:
Keep your preflop range open.
Become more aggressive
Get tough on bad teams
Keep Your Preflop Range Open
It’s not as convoluted as it seems; just play many hands.
The button is a position where you can play considerably more freely than in other spots. While it’s only profitable to play about 10% of your hands in the big blind, playing 30%-40% or more of your hands on the button is often a good strategy.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are the last player to act after the flop, you reveal no information about your betting tendencies and thus your hand is more valuable. Your opponents will play more cautiously if they have to second-guess your hand on every street. As a result, it doesn’t matter if you’re able to make your hands or not, you can still mistreat them.
What your button’s range should look like:
22+ Kings, Queens, and Jacks or Better in Suits
fit for two-hole shooters 96+ Suit-up-and-gap-ers 86+ Compatible plugs 34+ A8o+ K9o,Q9o,J9o,T9o+
Naturally, this range will change based on the specifics of the situation and your level of button comfort. The key takeaway, though, is that you need to play a lot of cards in this spot.
Experiment with Aggression
As long as you maintain your aggression, playing a wide variety of hands will pay well. The meaning of this is… Bet, bet, and bet some more; it’s that easy.
Don’t fold when you have the chance to raise, and take advantage of your opponents’ weak hands. If you have a tiny drawing hand and are looking to play a big multi-way pot from the button, limping in is the way to go. However, in the vast majority of situations, you should raise and play your hand aggressively.
What’s with the rough play? For the simple reason that you want to bait your foes into making blunders. Aggression can lead to a wide variety of mistakes on the part of your opponents, including drawing without odds, calling light, and getting tilted.
When you’re in a late position, your opponents have no idea what you’re going to do, which makes it quite easy to induce blunders from them. You benefit from their ignorance. Aggression, on the other hand, expands your winning options. Pots can be won aggressively either by making good hands or by betting everyone else out of the pot.
Can you see a player in the middle with a hand like ATo, which is rather weak? He’s interested in trying his luck, but he’s not sure how far he should go. Because of this, you can often get an advantage by betting on two streets while he calls (inefficiently) hoping for a lucky strike.
Get tough on bad teams
You want terrible players to suffer for their badness, and this is where the concept of aggression comes in. There are many different types of gamers you would wish to bother from the button, but the limper is the most popular.
The limper is known for frequently calling preflop raises with weak holdings. These gentlemen frequently act as station callers. A limper’s objective is to gain as much information as possible about the hand for the lowest possible cost. Your mission as the button is to financially punish bad players by making it as expensive as possible for them to draw.
You can usually tell the limpers at a table after making a few laps around it. If you’re in position, you should try to play pots against these men without any other players. Their hand range is weaker than yours, giving you an early edge. If you don’t have a strong hand, you can make up for it by playing aggressively and taking advantage of their mistakes.
When dealing out punishment to bad players, tread carefully. You should never bluff against a legitimate calling station. Raising preflop with any hand that is better than your opponent’s anticipated calling range is the ideal approach against weaker players. After the flop, settle into a simple game. This safeguards against losing chips trying to bluff inept opponents. The most money can be taken out of it, too, if your hands are legal.
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