UTG - Under The Gun

This is the first person to act and is always first after the big blind. In this position only premium hands are played as you are playing all the other hands at the table and the chances of a good hand being against you are quite big and so you must make sure that you have a big hand.

Early Position

This is the position next to act after under the gun; again in this early position you should only be playing premium hands because you have most of the table to play against and therefore you are more likely to run into a strong hand.

Middle Position

Here you are able to start to play more starting hands as you know you are only playing approximately half the table, so the medium hands become stronger in this position.

Late Position

In this position you can start to play marginal hands as they will only be up against two or three hands. Therefore an Ace in this position is strong where as in all other positions it would be a weak holding.

This should become one of the first factors that you need to bear in mind when deciding whether to play a hand or not.