|
"If it is true that people turn over in their graves,
then Thomas Jefferson and George Washington
should be sources of perpetual energy."
-- Peter Camejo
Solid play from the blind positions is crucial to being a winning poker player, especially in Texas Hold'em. Yet few players
focus on blind play nor consider it of anywhere near the same importance as starting hands outside the blinds. (More on
playing the blinds.)
If you were simply to be away from a brick and mortar Holdem table when it was your turn to take the blinds, you would
lose about three big bets in an hour (assuming the button orbits the table four times an hour). In contrast, a solid win
rate is one big bet an hour. Clearly then, to make that win rate, you would have to make four big bets an hour when in
the other positions -- not counting the additional amount you would need to win to offset the house
rake.
A difference between good Holdem players and less-good ones is that a good player will more often bet second pair when good
and fold it when it's a loser. Thus, even though everyone gets approximately the same cards in a game with very high short-term
random luck, the good player will extract a little positive value from marginally good situations and save from losing a little
negative value in marginally bad situations. That phenomenon is not difficult to understand (even if challenging to do).
What occurs in blind play is very similar. Better players take more value from their opponents' blinds while losing less while
in their own blinds. Some players mistakenly only try to do the first: attack other blinds. But that is actually the less
important skill. Playing from the blinds well not only has the benefit of earning us some profit, it encourages weaker
players to similarly play from the blinds, where they will tend to play in an unprofitable way -- not just because they will
play relatively poorly from out of position, but because the more hands weaker players play, the more likely they are to get
frustrated and go on tilt. It's an absolute: if you play with players who do go on tilt, doing small things to encourage them
to play more hands directly leads to them going on tilt more often.
Some players simply are unable to comprehend the concept of playing when you are an underdog, but have pot odds to do so.
This is one enormous difference between great players and merely good ones. If someone raises your big blind and everyone folds,
you're getting 3.5 to 1 on calling the raise. It does not matter at all if your opponent is a favorite in this situation. What
matters is if mathematically those 3.5 to 1 pot odds are profitable to you. You don't have to win anywhere near half the time
to make this call be profitable. You merely need to extract more value from the pot than you put into it. That's it. Get some
of that 3.5 bets worth of value. After you call there will be 4.5 small bets in the pot. You should be quite happy to regularly
get back the equity of 1.5 or 1.7 or 2.1 small bets. Even 1.1 is a good return. It makes no difference at all if your opponent
does better than that. What matters to us is we took the most profitable action available to us.
One of the most intimidating plays in Holdem is to call a raise before the flop from the big blind, and check/call after the
flop when the flop comes out a bunch of low rags. Watch this sometime. You can almost hear the pre-flop raiser's brain say:
"Uh-oh". The point here is not to advocate that you often make this play, but only to emphasize that playing against
a player in the big blind (much less so in the small blind) is a difficult thing to do -- especially if they are solid player.
The range of hands the blind player could have is not easy to pinpoint, for one thing. People often say they hate playing from
the blinds against a pre-flop raiser because it is hard. It's hard to play against a player who has better cards than you.
That's true, but the reverse is also true. It's very difficult to play against a tough/solid/tricky player in the big blind
(assuming the raiser doesn't flop a no-brainer hand) who could be playing a very wide variety of cards.
But this is the game. This is Texas Holdem. Tiny edges exploited time and time again. The blinds are
the catalyst of poker, and play involving them is the
foundation of profitable poker.
See also Playing the Blinds and
Finding Bargains in the Blinds
|
