Ok, here's some random thoughts on position.

In early position (EP) its much tougher (often ill-advised) to play 'drawing hands/speculative hands'. This is especially true in games where there's less dead money involved. At a very loose table, you'll be able to get away with "incorrect" EP starting requirements because all that dead money will effectively under-write your "mistakes". IOWs, you'll win big pots when you hit that will 'pay' for much or all your speculative play. That won't happen at a table where on average even if you do hit, you're not going to get paid off as handsomely. Now, your "mistakes" will materialize as a depleted stack short on chips. They will not be blurred out by others' mistakes.

As you develop as a player you should also start to notice that people build a deeper understanding and more respect for position as they move up in stakes. In general, at higher stakes there's less dead money in the middle of the table from hand to hand. You're forced to deal with the unpleasent realities that being out of position can bring when you find yourself in games where there's lots of aggression and isolation, and/or the players are on average much tighter. Interestingly enough, there's also a crowd of people at these middle stakes that talk like they know that position is important ("I had position, so I called", or "I never raise pre-flop from my big blind, what's the point, I'm out of position"), but their play and comments are a direct indication that they don't truly "get it" and definitely don't know how to use it to their advantage. These are the players that you want to seek out as opponents (see Fnord's post on exploitation quoted below); it's almost like they know just enough to be dangerous to themselves and to be profitable for you.

Again, wrt to marginal/drawing/speculative hands from EP, before the flop you have no idea what kind of pot odds you are going to be offered because you have no idea what the action will be behind you. Playing 22 (even from EP) with 7 people seeing the flop for one sb is EV+'ve. But, how do you know you'll have 6 callers? YOU DON"T!!! You rely on things you have no control over going your way. Playing 22 heads-up out of position against a PFR with tight raising requirements is EV-'ve. You typically have to hit a set to win, but you don't have the requisite pre-flop pot odds to try and flop one (I'm referring to limit here mostly ... in some, I stress some NL situations you don't need those pre-flop odds as much, because if you find yourself up against the right opponent with a set of 2s you might be able to take them for their whole stack (Implied odds baby!).

The importance of position tends to also be exaggerated in short handed situations compared to multi-way pots. Finding yourself heads-up/isolated, out of position against a pre-flop raiser with a hand like KTo is one of the worst situations you can find yourself in playing hold'em. If you hit the flop and get raised you may be forced to call them down with your dominated hand , or you'll fold incorrectly (i.e. the best hand) to the aggressor with position over you (remember it's HU). If you miss the flop and check, your opponent is going to bet with ANY holding and you are going to have to fold.

In general, you tend to loose the most and win the least when you are out of position.

All these points refer to position as it relates to your absolute position at the table wrt the button. But as you play a more advanced game, you also have to eventually learn to understand and appreciate what relative position at the table means to your game. (See Fnord's sticky in the Limit section:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ic.php?t=19103

; he's given some amazing insights into positional play (both absolute and relative) and he talks about how, if you manage to appreciate and integrate these positional ideas into your game, you'll be able to better exploit your opponents.