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C — Careful: Early position discipline

In the early seats, play only the premium hands — Group A, maybe the top of Group B.

When you're in an early seat, count the problem: six, seven, eight players act after you, on this round and every round to come. Any one of them can wake up with a monster. And whatever you do — call, raise — they all get to see it before deciding, while you've seen nothing.

So from up front, your standard is brutal: Group A raises, the very best of Group B plays, everything else folds. It'll feel like sitting out. It is sitting out — on the hands that lose money from that seat. The A♠J♦ fold from gate ♠S? That's this rule in action.

The compensation: when you do enter from early and the table's paying attention, your range reads scary-strong — because it is. Your premium hands get respect, which means the pots you play from up front start on your terms.

DIAL — ♣C by table size. Early position is a variable, not a fixed zone. 4-handed there is no early position at all — the seat before the button is functionally the cutoff, so this rule barely applies and you should play it as a second late seat. 8-handed it's the first two or three seats. 12-handed it's the first five or six, meaning you'll spend roughly half your session in the mud, folding. That's not timidity — it's the 84%-someone-has-an-ace figure doing its job.