Loosening up in late position is very important for every poker player who has ever stared across the felt. It is vital that you play tighter in early position so that you are only playing strong hands from bad spots, but it is just as important to make up for that lack of hands being played in early position by opening up your range in late position.

Playing hands in position is much easier than playing out of position. This goes hand in hand with how much money you can win. You will win more money in position than out of position no matter what because it is much easier to evaluate the correct play when you have extra information from your opponent.

Stealing Blinds

When you are playing poker your main goal is to achieve 5 big bets per 100 hands. This isn’t that hard as long as you can steal the blinds a decent amount. The best position to steal the blinds is on the button or close to the button. The littler amount of people that you need to fold means the better your chances of being able to steal the blinds. This will make up a proportionate amount of the money you earn during a poker session.

When stealing blinds you are not just raising a ton in later position. There is a lot more to it than that. It is vital that you keep an eye on the poker players that are in your blinds as you are the dealer to make sure that you are not going to get called often enough that it is a negative expected value play. You do not want to try and steal the blinds of loose players because they will call so often that your weak hands will just be weak hands. Your goal with these weak hands is to take down the money in the pot without any struggle. When players are calling your steal attempts you are losing money because you cannot continue too often once called because you have a weak hand.

What do I Raise With

It is very important that you know the hands to be raising with against each type of poker player. If you are raising against a tight player with a hand like A8 you will normally lose money when you pair you’re a because the tight player will have you out kicked. Against a loose player you don’t want to raise with a hand like 67 suited because even then making pairs you don’t know where you are at.

Against loose poker players you want to raise hands that you can make top pair with more easily. These players tend to call your raise preflop just because they don’t believe you and want to be the hero who fights back. Playing hands that still make good top pairs works very well against these poker players because they don’t believe you. Just like them not believing you when you raise they still don’t believe that you have made a pair either so this makes it easier to get value from them.

Against tight players you want to be stealing with suited connectors. This is because the tight poker players will be folding so often that you will make a great amount of money just for that. It is also very effective because when they do call and make a hand you have the opportunity to make a big hand like a straight or a flush that can beat their AK type of hand that they are calling with.