Low Stakes No Limit

One of the trickiest things new players deal with is figuring out how to profitably defend their blind. It happens so often: you’re in the big blind and a player on the button raises. He probably doesn’t have that great of a hand, but you look down at Jack-Eight suited. Should you play it?

In general, I would say that new players defend their blinds way too often. The blind positions are the least profitable seats on the table. Take a moment to consider that. You will almost inevitably, no matter how good you are, lose money over the course of your poker playing career from the blinds.

Of course, one major reason for this is that you put a modicum of money into each pot from the blinds only to typically fold preflop thereby surrendering that money. But another major reason people lose money hand over fist from the blind positions is that it’s the worst position to be in at the table post-flop.

After the flop, you will always be out of position playing a hand from the blinds. For that very reason, you should be very selective about what hands you play from the blinds since you will almost always face difficult decisions for the remainder of the hand. In other words, fold your blind hands very regularly. You should only be looking to play premium hands from the blinds. Yes, I know you already have made an investment into the pot, but cut your losses immediately and don’t further throw away chips trying to play some Jack-Eight hand out of position for the remainder of the hand.

Okay, so what do you do when you have a legitimate hand in the big blind? I recommend balancing your decisions as follows:

If you have a very strong hand (like TT+ or AQ+), you should consider re-raising the pot. Although you’re out of position, your hand strength more than makes up for that.

But what about when you have a good, but not great hand like KQ, AJ, or pocket 77? In these situations, I typically advocate just calling the raise and seeing a flop.

It’s a pretty safe bet that 70% of the time you’ll miss the flop, 20% of the time you’ll hit the flop fairly well, and 10% of the time you’ll hit the flop very well.

70% of the time you miss

In these spots, the only way you’re going to win is if you bet at the pot. You can be sure that if you check, your opponent will usually bet. For the most part, that is okay. My advice is to bluff at the pot about 25% of the time hoping your opponent folds, check/fold 65% of the time, and actually check/raise 10% of the time to balance your range for when you make that play and have a strong hand.

20% of the time you hit the flop

This is the trickiest hand to play since you don’t know if you are ahead or not. Anytime that is the case, you want to try to keep the pot as small as possible. Therefore, consider just checking the flop and calling your opponent’s bet. If the turn goes check-check, you can consider firing out a value-bet on the river.

10% of the time you hit the flop hard

In this situation I think you have two options: bet out at the flop or check/raise the flop. In general, I recommend doing a check/raise a little more often than leading out on the flop. Try to build a big pot here and now while you still like your hand a lot.