Learn How To Defend Your Blinds!

Defend Your Blinds!

Michael Thicke


The most important skill in limit hold'em is blind defense. Even players who are fairly tight from the blinds usually end up playing more hands from there than from any other position. That means that improving your play in this area will have a huge impact on your overall results.

There are two conflicting factors at work when you are in the blinds. You frequently have very good odds to call and see the flop, which favors playing many hands, but you will be in the worst position on every round after the first, which favors playing few hands. Balancing these considerations is the key to successful play from the blinds.

When There is No Raise Preflop

When there are no raises preflop many hands become playable from the small blind. However, you still want to avoid playing hands that are likely to be second-best on the flop. Being dominated is terrible in hold'em, and being dominated and out of position is even worse, because you tend to lose the maximum. When you are out of position it is very difficult to tell if your mediocre hands are ahead or not. Let's look at an easy example:

You have J 4 in the small blind. There are three limpers, you complete as you are getting 9-1 odds. The big blind checks. The flop comes 7 J K. You are first to act, what do you do? This flop could easily have missed everyone and you don't want to fold the best hand, so you bet out. Two people call. Now what? Does one of them have a K? Maybe someone has QJ and you're out-kicked. Maybe someone has QT and the other has a flush draw and you're winning. Maybe they have nothing and are just being your typical loose-callers. Who knows! If, instead of betting out on the flop, you'd chosen to check-raise a late-position bettor, you would probably still hit the turn not knowing if you were ahead or behind.

This is the situation you really want to avoid in the blinds. For that reason you should throw away a lot of non-suited, non-connected hands. You want to play hands where you will have a good idea about where you stand on the flop. A good range of hands to play from the small blind would be any suited cards (perhaps throwing away the absolute worst ones), two connected cards 67 and above, one-gappers T8 and above, any two face cards, and any A.

When there is no raise to you in the blinds you, of course, have the option to raise. In Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players they recommend that you only raise from the blinds with your very best hands, even suggesting that you check AK against two early position limpers who are fairly aggressive. I suppose this depends on how you define aggressive, but in general I, and most books and experts, believe you should be far more liberal in raising from the blinds. A hand like AK has a substantial edge against two hands that you'd expect people to limp with, even good aggressive people. Letting it check through here gives up a very good opportunity for profit. Preflop you are virtually guaranteed to be called, and raising forces your opponents to hit the flop or give up.

In games where there are frequently many limpers, you should be correspondingly more eager to raise from the blinds, even with hands like KJs or 99. In these loose-passive games your opponents are making huge mistakes preflop with their loose calls, so it behooves you to punish them as much as possible when you get quality hands.

When it is Raised and Multiway or Raised From Early Position

These situations indicate that your opponents have very strong hands and you should throw away all but your best hands from the small blind. It is generally recommended that you play the same hands you would play from late position against a raise. An exception to this is small pocket pairs, where the pot will often be offering you good odds to see if you can hit a set. This is an extension of the positional considerations I mentioned above – with a small pocket pair you will know where you are on the flop, either with a very strong hand or a very weak one. You have to throw away the weak suited and connected cards, though, because you are no longer getting the great odds you were when the pot was not raised.

In the big blind you'll often still be getting very good odds to play. A raised pot from the big blind offers you similar odds to an unraised pot from the small blind, with the difference being that there are usually fewer players in a raised pot than one where there are just limpers. The other consideration here is that the hands in a raised pot are going to be better than those in an unraised one. One major problem in this case is that you could make your strong hand and still lose. In some recent research done by an internet poster he found, among other things, that he actually made less money flopping 4-flushes from the blinds in a 5-way pot than a 4-way pot. He gave two reasons for this. First, the sample size was small, so it could be a statistical aberration. Second, and more likely in his opinion, he often lost to bigger flushes when there were that many people in the hand. When there are many people in the hand there are often also more than one person holding pocket pairs. In this case you could make a strong hand and still lose to a full house when the board pairs.

In general you can play most of the hands you'd limp with in late position (every hand that looks halfway decent – suited connectors, pocket pairs, face cards) against a raise in the big blind. The hands you want to avoid are the weak offsuit cards like KT and QT that will get you in to trouble after the flop. Even with the high-card hands you do choose to play you should be cautious after the flop.

When You Are Against One Late-Position Raiser

This situation doesn't come up all that often in low-limit play, but in mid-limit and high-limit it is very common. This case is very different from the ones above, for two reasons: you are probably not getting great odds anymore and your opponent could have a very weak hand. The hands that do well in this situation are frequently the ones you want to avoid in the other situations – high-card, top-pair-making hands.

In the small blind, against a steal the blinds player behind you, there are thing you need to consider. If you were assured of being heads-up against the raiser you'd call with a wide variety of hands to see how the flop looks. However with the big blind yet to act you have to be careful. They have position on you after the flop, will have very good odds to call preflop against two probably weak hands, and have the option of re-raising to punish your weak call. For these reasons, when you decide to defend in the small blind against a steal raise, you should virtually always re-raise. The only hands you might consider calling with are ones like QJs and KQs that don't mind three-way action and don't mind if the big blind raises. Just calling with a very strong hand like AA or KK is also an option against an aggressive opponent in the big blind. Here the plan is to trap both your opponents for four bets preflop by re-raising when the action gets back to you.

The main conclusion the internet poster I referred to above made is that heads-up from the big blind it is profitable for him to play a wide variety of holdings. He suggests playing any two suited cards, any connectors, any pair, and any hand where you think there is a good chance that at least one of your cards is higher than one of your opponent's cards. It is worth noting that this poster is a very good player with very good long-term results. He knows how to play his hands to the maximum in these spots. One thing he notes is that with low pocket pairs you must be willing to keep playing on ragged flops if you want to show a profit. You cannot fold every time you miss your set.

When you do defend heads-up from the blinds against a probable stealer, you should be pushing hard whenever you hit any piece of the flop, from bottom pair to a straight draw. You do not want to be check-calling with your draws, as your opponent will often have nothing more than an overcard. These spots are very profitable to semi-bluff in. If your bluff succeeds, great, but even if it doesn't you can still win the pot by making your hand.

Being passive against a stealer not only fails to extract the most profit from the hand you're playing, but it also misses an opportunity to affect how your opponent will play in future hands. If they know that you will often be re-raising them, check-raising them, and going after pots heads-up, they will be less likely to steal from you in the future. Being in late position against a blind that is just passively calling makes you feel very secure. You are in control of the betting, your opponent has to hit but you can win unimproved when they fold, and you can take a free card on the turn or a free showdown on the river if you'd like. Against a player who is tossing chips in the pot the stealer is forced to make a hand of their own, and that will make them less enthusiastic about raising your blind with marginal holdings in the future.

When it is Folded to the Blinds

In live games the blinds generally “chop” (just take back their bets) when it is folded to them. This avoids the rake and moves things along to the next hand. Online this is not an option; you must contest the pot. Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players notes that if the small blind always raises it will show an automatic profit if the big blind folds more than 30% of the time. In general loose players will almost never fold, but tight players, especially ones playing mechanically due to being in several games at once, will usually not meet this basic criteria. Thus my basic strategy in the small blind is to always (or nearly always) raise tight players and wait for decent hands to raise loose ones. A decent hand in this case would be any pair, any two cards 9 or above, and any A. You also need to tighten up against a big blind that will often re-raise. The big blind has the positional advantage here, so against a player that doesn't concede to you automatically you have to be careful.

In the big blind, as I mentioned, you need to call a small blind raise 70% of the time or more, unless the small blind is tight and often just folds in this spot. This means playing all but your worst hands. In heads-up matches, most of the bottom 30% of hands contain a 2, 3, 4, or 5 without a face card. If you have a hand without one of these cards and it isn't absolutely terrible looking (96o say), you need to play. On the flop you need to be similarly generous. If you hit any part you should be in there betting and raising.

These confrontations can get tricky, with such tactics as check-raise bluffing on the turn, capping the flop with strong draws and firing again on the turn, etc. Against an opponent who plays aggressively, you will want to tighten up from either blind. This will allow you to have the upper hand when the pot starts getting large.

Variable Small Blind Sizes

The small blind is usually one-half of the big blind, but it can sometimes be one-third or two-thirds. When the small blind is two thirds you are getting even better odds to play, and you can play nearly anything against limpers. However, you still need to be careful when you flop a weak one-pair hand. You can lose a lot of money pushing those hands too hard. In a one-third scenario, I tend to play more as if I'm in late position, throwing away the worst of the suited cards and lower connectors. Although it might seem like these fractional bets don't matter, they do over the long run.

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Learning how to defend your blinds can be very vital. If you dont learn how to do this well you can easily get blinded to death when you are getting bad hands in a tournament.

Another thing you will need to learn and hopefully I will be showing you sometime soon is how to steal blinds when you see weakness. The Blinds in the later rounds of a big tournament can be like taking down a small pot.

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