Small Blind Play

Byron Jacobs

One great difficulty that many weaker hold’em players have is handling play from the blinds. This is always a tricky issue as there are always positive and negative features about getting involved from the blinds. On the positive side you have already made a contribution to the pot, so if you want to see the flop you can either do so for free or cheaply. The negative features are that you will obviously have bad position for the whole hand and are taking on players whose hands are likely to be better than yours.

Blind play becomes particularly important when you are involved in short-handed play. Many sites spread 5-max and 6-max tables at the lower and middle limits and such tables are very popular. They can also be very profitable for strong players as weak players are easier to beat in short-handed play than in full ring games. If a full ring player is sufficiently disciplined to maintain a tight style of pre-flop play that will avoid problems, then outplaying them is not that easy. Whenever they show up in a pot they will usually have a decent hand and opportunities for mixing it up are going to be few and far between.

If they are sufficiently disciplined then quite moderate players can exist perfectly well in full ring play even at the higher limits. I have seen players get by at the $20-$40 and $30-$60 level, simply by being very tight and not getting involved in battles over the blinds. When they are in the blinds they will simply give them up to a steal (unless they have something really decent) rather than get involved in a big fight with a mediocre hand. They wait patiently for their big hands and when they do get them there is often someone around to pay them off. This can compensate adequately for the small ‘tax’ that they pay by often forfeiting their blinds.

Short-handed play creates many more chances for good players to exploit weaker players’ vulnerabilities. The blinds come round much more quickly in 5-max or 6-max and anyone who constantly gives them up without a fight is simply leaking too much.

Furthermore the theory of short-handed play is much less well developed than it is for full ring play. Many books have a small section on short-handed play but they are often content to merely state a few obvious generalities such as: you must play more hands, you must be more aggressive, pre-flop you should be raising or folding, etc.

There is one element of short-handed play where I feel that existing theory – such as it is – can be improved. This involves defending the small blind, in particular playing against a steal raise. I would define this as an open raise from either the cut-off or the button. These are the two positions where many players will really take liberties. In soft games players on the button will often open raise with almost anything (I will anyway) and don’t need much more in the cut-off. However, once you are two off the button you have four opponents yet to speak and even fairly loose players get a bit more circumspect here.

The accepted viewpoint is that if you are in the small blind, defending against a steal raise, you should re-raise or fold. Many books even go so far as state that calling a steal raise from the small blind is always a mistake and that players who make this play simply don’t understand the game.

In many circumstances re-raising or folding is indeed almost certainly correct. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

In all the following scenarios you are playing in the small blind in a six-handed $20-$40 game. You have two opponents, MrStrong and MrWeak, who are both often to be found playing short-handed and are well known to you.

MrStrong is a decent short-handed player. He is aggressive and is perfectly capable of causing trouble by playing hard with weak made hands, drawing hands or even nothing at all. He is also perfectly capable of folding when he thinks he is beat. He is a fairly liberal steal-raiser and will try it on from the button with some pretty ropey holdings.

MrWeak, on the hand, plays short-handed games as if he were in a full ring game. He seems to understand that you must be aggressive in these games, but he hardly ever is. He will open raise pre-flop but beyond the flop he is rather predictable – only raising with good made hands and strong draws. You have never seen him pushing a weak draw or running a bluff. However, like many solid players he is a bit suspicious and tends to call down without a great deal. If he has a pair of twos or a decent ace he will often look you up. He is rather tighter in his pre-flop requirements and probably will have something reasonable if he open-raises even if he is on the button.

These two player profiles are very typical of players you find playing short-handed tables at the middle limits.

In our first example you are in the small blind and MrStrong open raises from the button. You have a pocket pair and must decide what to do. Of course, your decision rather depends on how good your pair is. Firstly let’s assume you are lucky enough to have a big pair (J-J through to A-A). There is nothing much to think about here – you obviously re-raise. Incidentally, some players will just call here – hoping to lure the big blind in and build a big pot. However, this is just bad play. If the big blind does call all you have achieved is an increase in the number of your opponents rather than an increase in the size of the pot (if you re-raise the button will – at least – call, and this will still generate one extra small bet in the pot).

If you have a slightly lower pair (8-8, 9-9 or 10-10) you must still re-raise. Again this is straightforward. You do not want to give MrWeak in the big blind a cheap call with something like K-4 suited and watch him make a pair of kings on the flop. You want him out of the pot so you can play MrStrong heads up with (possibly) a much stronger hand than his.

As your pair deteriorates below 8-8 there comes a point at which you don’t really want to be three-betting. With a hand like 8-8 you are unlikely to be a big underdog to the button (he would need a higher pair for this to be the case), but at the same time there is a good chance that you can be a solid favourite. This will be the case if MrStrong is playing a small pair or an A-x hand where ‘x’ is small – and these are perfectly reasonable open-raising hands from the button. However, once you drop down to something like 3-3 the whole dynamic of the situation changes. It is almost impossible for you to be a solid favourite and you are now slightly more likely to be a big underdog to a higher pair. In principle you are about a 55%-45% favourite against MrStrong’s most likely holding – two random overcards – but you are out of position and MrStrong is a skilful player.

This is not a great situation to be in unless you are fortunate enough to flop a set. Much of the time he is going to give you heat on the flop or turn and you will be playing guessing games. Occasionally he will have absolutely nothing and fold – but then you won’t be making any money. Meanwhile, because he is tricky, you are going to be obliged to pay him off quite often. Playing a tiny pair, out of position against a skilled player is just not a profitable proposition.

So, can you call pre-flop instead? No. This doesn’t work either. It is most likely that MrWeak will call with anything except a really terrible hand and he will be right to do so because his pot odds are 5-to-1 (he will be putting $20 into a $100 pot). Your call with your small pair is offering 3-to-1 pot odds (after the big blind calls there will be $120 in the pot and you will have contributed $30 with your call). The chance of you flopping a set is 7½-to-1 which is obviously insufficient and with just two opponents the implied odds are also feeble. It is best to fold.

An interesting question is at what point does your small pair become a fold rather than a re-raise here? I would say that 6-6 is about borderline against a moderately aggressive steal-raiser.

Let’s now switch the players round so that MrWeak is open raising from the button and MrStrong is in the big blind. How will this affect your decision? The answer is – only slightly. You will now probably re-raise rather than fold with even lower pairs. How low you go more or less depends on how comfortable you feel about playing MrWeak heads up. If you feel that you can read him fairly accurately then you can even re-raise with a pair of twos. If you can get away from the hand when he outflops you but he will pay you off much of the time when he doesn’t then this becomes a profitable situation.

Now let’s run through the same scenarios again but this time you have unpaired high cards. With the big hands (A-K, A-Q, A-J, A-10 and maybe A-9) you re-raise and this is an obvious decision. There is a good chance that you are dominating the button so you definitely want the big blind out. Your hand will then have a good chance to stand up even if you don’t improve. What do you do, however, if you have a couple of moderate high cards, say K-10 or Q-J? Now how do you play?

This is a very interesting question. First of all let’s put MrStrong back on the button and you are facing his open raise. Let’s say you have Ks-10s – not a great hand but quite possibly better than MrStrong’s (remember – he is a pretty aggressive stealer). If you fold this hand here you are giving up too much, so this looks like a good situation for a re-raise. We know that MrStrong will make plays post-flop but he is also capable of folding a bad hand. If we get MrWeak out and get heads up with MrStrong good things can happen:

  1. We may actually have the better hand.
  2. He might fold a weak A-x hand (if he is dominated, he is playing just three outs) if he misses the flop.
  3. If the flop is scary but misses you, he might fold a low pair.
  4. If we miss the flop and MrStrong gives us heat it is easier to get away from the hand as K-10 doesn’t have much in the way of showdown value. When you are playing a pair of fours and MrStrong gives you heat you may decide to fold, but there may well be the nagging suspicion that he pushed you off the best hand. It is easier to dump K-10 with a clear conscience.

Again there will come a point when your ‘moderate’ high cards become a bit too weak to justify taking the initiative with a re-raise. I would say Q-J and Q-10 are borderline and J-10 is certainly too weak.

Now let’s swop round and put MrWeak on the button. Suddenly, re-raising doesn’t look so attractive. Okay, we probably get MrStrong out and end up heads up with MrWeak but this is now not such a great situation:

  1. We probably don’t have the better hand.
  2. From what we know of MrWeak, he may look us up with a weak A-x hand.
  3. He may also get obstinate when holding a small pair.

Re-raising is a better strategy against MrStrong because it will sometimes be possible to win without making a hand, whereas against MrWeak this is less likely. So, if re-raising is not all that attractive, is there another way to play the hand? Obviously we can fold, but K-10 suited is not such a bad hand against a steal raise. Can we break the rules and call?

I actually think that this line of play has much to be said for it. The key point is that with the stubborn MrWeak on the button you are likely to have to make a hand to win the pot. As we know, you are getting 3-to-1 pot odds for your call (assuming MrStrong calls, but you are also happy if he folds) and you have a 2-to-1 chance to make a pair plus some small extra chances to hit some kind of useful draw. So, bearing in mind that it is not all that likely that you are dominated, you certainly have pot odds to call.

Of course there is a drawback in that you are letting MrStrong in cheaply, but does this really matter? If you are just calling with your Ks-10s and now he comes along with, say, 9c-8h, are you really that worried? By calling, you are treating your holding as a drawing hand (for which you have decent odds) and when playing a draw you don’t mind extra players being involved. They build up the pot and may also make a moderate hand that encourages them to pay you off.

If the flop now misses you then – in general – you are just going to fold and it only cost you 1½ small bets. However, if you do connect with the flop you are in a good position to check raise and build a decent pot with a decent hand.

In these circumstances it seems to me that calling pre-flop is a better way to handle your moderate holding than re-raising. If you re-raise and miss the flop you will then feel obliged to pump away at the pot when MrWeak is sitting there stubbornly with his A-x or small pair.

Poker is such a situational game that it is rare for a particular play to be right 100% of the time. If you keep an open mind you may well spot profitable opportunities to make ‘non-standard’ plays.

Provided by Card Player, The Poker Authority

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