Where you sit decides which hands are worth playing. Here is every seat at the table, what it is called, and how it changes your strategy.
Position is where you sit relative to the dealer button, and it is one of the biggest edges in poker. The later you act, the more you already know when it is your turn, so the same two cards can be a clear raise on the button and an easy fold under the gun. Click any seat in the table below to see what it is called and how it plays. Toggle between 6-max and 9-max to see how the seats change.
The dealer button marks who is nominally the dealer, and it moves one seat clockwise after every hand, so everyone takes a turn in every seat. Your position is simply how far you are from that button. The player to the button's left posts the small blind, the next posts the big blind, and action proceeds clockwise from there.
What matters is not the name of your seat but how many players still have to act after you. Those are the only players who can wake up with a big hand and punish you, and postflop they are the players you will have to act before on every street.
Poker is a game of incomplete information, and position hands you more of it than anyone else at the table. When you act last, you have already watched everyone else check, bet or raise before you commit a chip. You get to value bet more thinly because you know when everyone is weak, bluff more effectively because you know when everyone is scared, and control the size of the pot because you always have the final say.
The player who acts first has none of that. They have to make decisions blind and then find out what everyone else thinks. Over thousands of hands, that information gap is worth a large chunk of a winning player's profit, which is why the button is the single most profitable seat and the blinds are the least.
Reading clockwise from the button, here is every seat in a full nine-handed game. A six-handed table simply drops the earliest three.
| Position | Abbr. | Where it sits | How to play it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under the Gun | UTG | First to act preflop, immediately left of the big blind | Tightest range at the table — premium hands only |
| UTG+1 / UTG+2 | EP | The next early seats (9-max only) | Still very tight; a hair wider than UTG |
| Middle Position | MP | The middle of the table | Solid hands; skip the speculative ones |
| Hijack | HJ | Two seats right of the button | Start widening; you are getting close to late position |
| Cutoff | CO | One seat right of the button | Open wide and attack the blinds; only the button acts behind you |
| Button | BTN | The dealer seat; acts last on every postflop street | Widest range in the game — the most profitable seat |
| Small Blind | SB | Immediately left of the button; posts half a big blind | Mostly raise or fold; you are out of position for the whole hand |
| Big Blind | BB | Two seats left of the button; posts a full big blind | Defend fairly wide (you already have a bet in), but you are out of position postflop |
The seats group into four bands, and each one plays differently.
Those two phrases describe a single hand between two players. You are in position when you act after your opponent on every postflop street, and out of position when you act before them. Being in position is the good side of that: you see what they do first, every time.
The button is in position against everyone. The blinds are out of position against everyone except each other. Everyone else is in position against the players to their right and out of position against the players to their left. This is why a hand's value depends so heavily on who is left in the pot with you and where they are sitting.
A nine-handed (full ring) table adds three early seats in front of the action, and those seats play tighter than anything you will see in a six-handed game. But notice what the diagram above shows when you switch between them: the button, cutoff and blinds are the same in both. A seat is defined by how many players act behind it, not by how many people sat down, so late position and the blinds behave identically. Full ring just adds more early seats where you fold and wait.
The practical upshot is a staircase. From under the gun you might open roughly one hand in nine; from the button, closer to one in two. As you move toward the button you add suited connectors, suited aces, weaker broadways and small pairs, because they get to see cheap flops in position and win big pots when they connect. From early position those same hands are folds, because acting first with a marginal holding is how players bleed chips.
You do not have to memorise this by feel. The preflop charts give you the exact opening range for every seat you just clicked, in both 6-max and 9-max, for cash games and tournaments.
Clockwise from the dealer button: the small blind and big blind (the forced bets), then under the gun and the other early seats, middle position, the hijack, the cutoff, and finally the button. In a six-handed game the positions are the small blind, big blind, under the gun, hijack, cutoff and button.
The button. You act last on the flop, turn and river, so you always have the most information and the final say on the size of the pot. It is the most profitable seat at the table by a wide margin.
Under the gun (UTG) is the seat immediately to the left of the big blind, the first player to act preflop. Because the entire table still acts behind you, it demands the tightest range of any seat.
The cutoff is the seat directly to the right of the button, and the hijack is one more seat to the right. Both are late-position seats where you open a wide range to steal the blinds, since only a couple of players remain to act behind you.
In a casino a professional dealer deals every hand, and the button just marks which player is the nominal dealer for that hand — the reference point for the blinds and the acting order. In a home game the player on the button usually deals. Either way, the button moves one seat clockwise after every hand.
You are in position when you act after your opponent on every postflop betting round, which lets you see what they do before you decide. You are out of position when you have to act first. Acting last is a significant, lasting advantage.
Knowing the seats is step one. Turning that into profit means opening the right hands from each one and playing them well after the flop. Start with the preflop charts for exact opening ranges by position, run any two hands against each other with the odds calculator, and if you are still learning the game, read how to play poker first.
Poker Spot ties it together: a preflop trainer that drills you on position-based ranges, hand replays that show every decision in context, and session tracking that reveals which seats are actually winning and losing you money.