Poker positions explained

Why position matters

In Hold’em the button moves one seat to the left every hand, and the order of play follows it. Acting later is a real, repeatable advantage, not a superstition:

• You decide with more information. By the time the button acts on the river, it has seen every check, bet and raise from the players before it.
• You control the size of the pot. Acting last, you choose whether a street ends with a check or a bet; out of position you have to guess first.
• Bluffs and steals work better. When it’s folded to the cutoff or button, only two or three players can still wake up with a hand, so a raise takes the blinds more often.
• Fewer players behind means fewer surprises. Under the gun, eight players still act after you; on the button, only the two blinds do.

The practical result: play your tightest range in early position and widen it as you move toward the button. The blinds are the exception — they’re already paying, but they act first after the flop, so they are the seats where most players lose chips over time.

Position names at every table size

The seats are named from the button backward (cutoff, hijack, lojack) and from the big blind forward (under the gun, UTG+1, UTG+2). As a table gets shorter, the early seats disappear first. Here they are in the order they act before the flop:

Names vary a little between books and sites. Some call the lojack and hijack “middle position” (MP, MP1, MP2), and at a six-handed table the first seat is sometimes called the lojack instead of UTG. What never changes is the order: the seat left of the big blind acts first before the flop, and the button acts last after it.

• Early position — UTG, UTG+1, UTG+2: the most players behind you. Strong hands only.
• Middle position — lojack and hijack: a little looser, still with several players to act.
• Late position — cutoff and button: the best seats for opening, stealing and playing pots.
• Blinds — small and big blind: forced bets, and first to act on every street after the flop.

How many hands to play from each seat

A simple rule of thumb explains why ranges widen toward the button. If k players are still to act behind you, the chance that none of them was dealt a hand from the top x% is (1 − x)^k. Open the widest range that keeps that chance at 40%:

Opening width = 1 − 0.4^1/k
Under the gun at nine-handed (8 behind): 11%. Cutoff (3 behind): 26%. Button (2 behind): 37%. The 40% is a tuning choice, not a law — a starting point for deep-stacked, first-in raises, before you adjust to your opponents.

Which hands fill each width? Below, hands are ranked by their all-in equity against 2 random hands (100,000 simulated deals per hand) and taken strongest first until the width is reached. Real charts also weigh playability — suited connectors gain value in position — so treat this as a baseline, not a script.

The same math works at any table size, because only the number of players behind you matters. Under the gun at a six-handed table has five players behind — the same as the lojack at nine-handed — so it opens about 17%. Four-handed, the first seat has three behind and plays like a cutoff. For the full 169-hand chart, see poker starting hands.

The heads-up exception

With only two players, the normal blind order would leave the button with no blind at all, so the rules flip: the button posts the small blind and the other player posts the big blind. The button acts first before the flop and last on every street after it. That makes heads-up a game of wide ranges: with one player behind, the rule of thumb already says 60%, and many heads-up players open even more. More in heads-up poker.

Playing the blinds

The blinds are the only seats that pay before seeing cards, and they act first from the flop on. The big blind gets a discount — it has already put in a full bet, so calling a small raise is cheap — which is why it defends more hands than any other seat. The small blind has neither advantage: tighten up, and prefer raising to calling when you do play.

On FizzPoker the blinds rise on a clock (every 3, 5, 10 or 15 minutes, depending on the speed the host picks), so the price of sitting in the blinds grows as the game goes on — and stealing them from late position matters more and more. To feel the difference, play a few orbits against bots. With a free account, the Stats tab then breaks your own games down by position — VPIP, PFR and win rate in big blinds per 100 hands for every seat — so you can see whether your button really out-earns your blinds. To test your seat-by-seat decisions without a full game, try the Poker IQ test: twelve six-handed spots, each one graded. New to the terms? The poker glossary covers every seat name and more.

Questions people ask

Keep going

• Starting hands chartAll 169 hands by equity, one to eight opponents.
• How to play Hold’emThe rules, with a hand you can step through.
• Heads-up pokerTwo-player rules, blinds and a hand-strength chart.
• Poker termsA searchable A–Z glossary with examples.