In limit, is position more valuable heads-up, 6 max or full ring? Why?

[brick]

Will someone explain the detail of this question to me, or point me to an article.
In a limit ring game, is position more valuable heads-up, 6 max or full ring? Why?

[mudbuddha]

position is always important. whether 2 ppl or 9. i dont understand.. how it can be more important in one??

maybe more important in full ring bc .. theres greater ppl that you have position on..?

i dontreally understand the question to be honest.

[bugstud]

I would imagine it is less important the more people are added.

[brick]

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i dontreally understand the question to be honest.

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I want someone to tell explain how I should measure the value of position.
And tell me if it's more valuable 9 handed or 2 handed.

[nanoCRUSHER]

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I want someone to tell explain how I should measure the value of position.

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The answer is more complex than just a number. In good position, you can play more hands profitably than you could from an earlier position, you can bet in situations that you normally wouldn't (resulting in pots you wouldn't normally win), etc. For a quantitative analysis, buy pokertracker and compare hand-for-hand how position and number of players changes the EV of every hand you play.

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And tell me if it's more valuable 9 handed or 2 handed.

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This is a shot in the dark: 2 handed position doesn't change the value of your hand very much because there are only two positions you can be in, and ideal strategy doesn't change between the two positions all that much (this sounds like defining a word using the word, but hear me out: you would play 87 suited nearly the same way whether you were in position vs. out of position in HU, but put yourself in a ring game, playing 87s up front in an aggressive game is definitely -EV). So either 6-handed or full ring would be the answer.

I would argue that it is equally important in all cases but for different reasons.

In 6-max or full, obviously position gives you a clearer account of the odds you're going to have when you make your bet. In many ways you are taking the odds instead of giving them when you're in late position - note the 87s example on another thread.

In limit, being last to act has to be even more key when you're heads up, especially if betting is uncapped. In the second position you have the ability to close the betting by checking or calling and more effectively determining the pot odds than the first to act.

[daryn]

it's most important in heads up i would say. if you played a heads up match where you always had the button, it would be ugly

[Tilt]

First, what do you mean by "more important"? I assume you mean the relative rate at which position contributes to your win rate in these different games. Someone with a large PT database ought to be able to analyze this question empirically.

I think you would find that as the # players decrease, the value of actual hands matters less to the outcome. When that happens, position has to become relatively more important.

[Zetack]

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it's most important in heads up i would say. if you played a heads up match where you always had the button, it would be ugly

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I agree that it would be a huge advantage to always have position heads up. But I would say its least important in heads up precisely because the position switches back in forth every hand. You will have position on your opponent half the time and he will have it on you half the time.

Full ring on the other hand, relative position is fairly fixed. If a guy is to your right immediate right you have position on him on every hand except one in each orbit. Further, because you have to account for or exploit the actions of a number of other actors at every decision point, position becomes much more important.

So full ring, six handed, heads up. That's the order of importance.

--Zetack

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I think you would find that as the # players decrease, the value of actual hands matters less to the outcome. When that happens, position has to become relatively more important.

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This might be true if position and hand quality were the only factors that decided your winrate.

I agree mostly with Zetack's analysis. Part of my response is based on MLH. Position doesn't matter much in heads-up, as Zetack reasoned. I also think that position matters most in full games, but more so in pots involving 3-5 players. In pots that are larger than this, you will typically have to showdown the best hand to win, and players know this. The size of the pot dwarfs the extra couple of bets you may earn with position. In short pots, position will give you a greater ability to thrive in situations where the size of the pot doesn't overwhelm the size of your decision. It is in these pots where position has the greatest effect on the amount of value you can extract from a hand.