The Position Recommendations for Starting Hands

 
Early-position
(seats 1-3)
premium hands

Mid-position
(seats 4-6)
premium and strong hands

Late-position
(seats 6-9)
premium, strong and drawing hands

Position is more of a factor in pot-limit and no-limit games than it is in limit. The charts analyzing position using the PokerRoom.com statistics are for limit games and are not valid for pot-limit or no-limit play. Players in a limit game with a good drawing hand can often get away with checking and calling a last position bet because the cost to see one more card is by definition limited. An early-position player with a good draw in a no-limit game often cannot afford to put his or her entire stack at risk if a late-position player makes a big bet. The expected value of suited-connectors is strongly dependent on both the rank of the cards and the seat position. These effects can be seen on the chart by looking at the increase in expected values of Jack-10 suited as the seat number increases (position becomes later), and of the expected value increase for seat 10 (last position) as the rank of cards increase. The peak of this three-dimensional plot is for Jack-10 suited in seat 9. Suited-connectors that do not contain a card of at least rank 10 have done poorly from all but the last three seat positions. The one anomaly is 8-7 suited, which has done well for players "under-the-gun." It has a negative or zero expected value for all other positions. I have no explanation for this anomaly.