Head Games: The Importance of Having the Right Mindset When in Position and Having the Lead in Tournament Play With Mohsin Charania, Matt Vengrin, and Jonathan Tamayo

Craig Tapscott: Can you define very specifically your mindset when taking advantage of position in tournaments?

Mohsin Charania: My mindset when I am in position against good players in tournaments is to be very focused so that I don’t miss any spots that will be plus expected value (+EV) for me. Sometimes those spots are just people not opening as wide as they should because they are worried that you (acting behind you) will reraise or flat, putting pressure on them pre and post-flop that they don’t want to deal with. Sometimes, people will check flops and turns to give you a free card out of fear that you might raise their bet or float the flop and make a play later. 

Recently, I played day one of the World Poker Tour Jacksonville events and I had position on a few young kids, but Shannon Shorr had position on me. My plan was to play pots against Shannon when I was the button and he was the small blind, as I didn’t want to have to constantly be put in spots where I didn’t know what he would do. Having position on the young kids whenever a weaker player opened, they weren’t as likely to reraise him or flat because they knew I could make a play behind them, as I had a lot of chips. Oftentimes, they would also check-call ace-high hands, which they thought were good against me, but weren’t 100 percent sure. By doing this, they didn’t really know what I had and were forced into a guessing game whenever I bet. 

Matt Vengrin: In real estate they say location, location, location. The same is true of poker. Position, position, position. If poker is a game of information, then he who has the most information is at an advantage. 

Being in position allows us to see what our opponent does before it gets to us. Are they strong? Are they weak? We get some inkling of this while they are sitting there anticipating what we will do, but they can never know until they act first.
 
Position becomes more important as the tournament gets deeper, and the stacks get shallower. In the beginning, it is far better to be defending from the blinds out of position than it is in mid to late stages. In the early stages, there is not much money to be won in a pot with a continuation bet, but in the mid to late stages of a tournament, most pots can be picked up with a simple continuation bet following a check. But this can only be done when in position. 

One example of this is late in a tournament. Let’s say the blinds are 10,000-20,000 with a 2,000 ante. We have 550,000, and our opponent in the big blind has 290,000. We are playing eight-handed and it folds to us. We raise K J from the cutoff to 45,000, and it folds to the big blind, and he defends with A-7 offsuit. The flop comes down 9-2-2 rainbow, and he checks to us. There is now 116,000 in the pot and he checks to us. We continuation bet half the pot (58,000) and our opponent is now faced with a tough decision. He has to guess if we have a good hand or a hand he beats. Most of the time, he will be forced to fold here, and we will pick up free, much-needed chips. And all this happened because we had position.

So how do you use position to your advantage? Fold more blinds; focus on giving up marginal hands instead of defending them. Be more aggressive from mid to late position and force people to play out of position or to concede the blinds and antes. Patience is a huge part of poker. Opportunities will arise, try not to force them. 

Jonathan Tamayo: You always want to leverage your position in a tournament hand. If you do not have position, then you will have to play optimally against your opponent in each situation, which becomes more difficult the better the player you face when you are out of position.

You have to keep in mind that being last to act can almost double your equity for that hand compared to being out of position if you have a plus expected value (+EV) situation. For example, say you flop the nut straight against a smart opponent, but are out of position because you called from the small blind against his button open. You are now presented with two basic options that we obviously know: betting or checking. Your problem now is that you may not get value on any street because your opponent checked behind if you check to induce a bet. You are essentially attempting to make an educated guess on what he will do after you act, a process that may be repeated three times. If you instead swap the positions and have the button, you are still trying to predict how your opponent will act, but if you are wrong, you still get your option to bet your hand or wait for a future street. If you get to the river and the hand has been checked, you can adjust your bet-sizing accordingly to attempt to get maximum value with what you think your opponent’s hand strength is with how the hand has played out to that point.

Craig Tapscott: How important is having the lead in the hand? What are the variables that you are thinking about that come into play?

Mohsin Charania: Oftentimes, you can get the lead in the hand by simply being the one that opens the pot and having people only call behind you and, other times, it can be done through three-betting an open and having your opponent flat.

Being the lead aggressor has its benefits, as oftentimes people will give you credit for a stronger hand than you might have because you showed the preflop strength of opening or reraising preflop. This allows you to take the pot by putting in a continuation bet on the flop on boards that will often have high cards on them, as they might not have hit your opponents range or they would have reraised preflop.

While this isn’t always true, it applies more to weaker players whose hands are more clearly defined by their preflop actions. Some of the variables you have to think about when you three-bet preflop and take the lead after your opponent just calls are 1) is your opponent trapping? 2) is your opponent just flatting marginal hands preflop? 3) (most important) how capable is your opponent post flop? Can he check-raise you or is he capable of just calling your flop bet so that he can bluff on a later street. 

Oftentimes, when I want to take the lead in a hand by reraising preflop, I take into account how easily I will be able to win the pot post-flop and if it’s worth finding a better spot. Weaker players sometimes will just call your three-bet or your raise preflop and fold if they miss without any resistance. Sometimes you can even look at them and see if they are planning on folding without even placing a bet. And that’s why, a lot of times, taking the lead against them can yield a lot of chips. 

Matt Vengrin: Having the lead in the hand is of utmost importance, probably on par with being in position, and both of them at once is a formidable combination.
 
The example given in the previous question outlines having the lead also. If we had limped K J instead of raising and the big blind checked his option, then they may have bet the flop (9-2-2 rainbow), thinking their hand was best and they could fold out K-Q, J-10, K-J type of hands or suited connectors that don’t involve a nine. 

Being able to take advantage of position combined with controlled aggression will cause you to win chips throughout the tournament. This helps pad your stack to hopefully make a run at the final table and victory. 

Keep in mind that it is important to have controlled aggression, to know when it’s time to be aggressive, or time to be passive. This is the key ingredient to winning tournaments. This is something that must come from practice. Only you can know when the time is right.

Jonathan Tamayo: I actually don’t think having the lead in the hand is advantageous in general. When players talk about relative position, they always talk about the player with the betting lead. This is why some players do not want to be to the immediate left of the preflop raiser in a multi-way pot, especially me.

I will explain why. Most of the time, due to game flow, players will check to the preflop raiser, thereby meaning that the preflop raiser in a way will bet first in the hand. In a weird way, this means that the preflop raiser is out of position in the hand, and therefore not in an advantageous position. Obviously this game state can be changed by the preflop raiser checking, but that is another level that would have to do with balancing your range and adjusting to game state appropriately.

The advantage would also depend on my absolute position in the hand (your position relative to the button). The most advantageous for me would be having absolute position with the betting lead. This means I can choose to continuation bet or check back without having to worry about the action behind me.

Another variable you have to think about in regard to betting frequencies is if I’m against an aggressive player that I have little information about. I can make an assumption (obviously subject to change) that the player’s continuation betting frequency will be on the high side. On the opposite end, if a player is very passive, that player will continuation bet less. This enables me to plan later on in the hand on whether I want to float a player post-flop or even three-bet preflop to take the betting lead away. I can float at the very extremes if the player is very aggressive or very passive.

The aggressive player will likely put in a bet on the flop whether he missed or hit the flop, and a passive player will either put in zero or one bet post-flop if he missed the board. Against the aggressive player, betting the turn becomes more expensive and, by floating, I don’t telegraph the strength of my hand compared to the times that I will have a strong hand. Against the passive player, he will be oblivious to the situation and only play his hand strength in a straightforward manner afterwards. Against all other opponents in between, it gets murky and you have to mathematically balance your frequencies. ♠

Mohsin Charania is a graduate of the University of Illinois. He put law school on hold at Northwestern University to pursue poker full time. Since then, he has banked more than $4 million in combined online and live tournament career cashes. Charania won the 2012 European Poker Tour Grand Final main event.

Matt Vengrin has been playing poker since 2004. He won a PokerStars WCOOP bracelet in no-limit hold’em this past September for $56,376. He can be found on twitter at
@mattvengrin.

Jonathan Tamayo hails from Humble, Texas and is a 2008 Cornell University graduate. In 2013, he won the World Series of Poker Circuit Palm Beach Kennel Club main event. He has accumulated more than $2.1 million in combined live and online tournament earnings.