Blind Poker – How to Play Effectively from the Blinds

Every few hands you have to gamble and throw some money into the pot before you ever see your cards, knowing that you are unlikely to see that money again. Playing the blinds can be excruciating, as not only are you losing money constantly, even when you get a strong hand you are stuck in the worst position at the table.

If it makes you feel better, very few poker players turn a profit from the blinds. Everyone has to play them, and everyone loses. Good poker players learn to reduce that loss and make more money than other players because they don't have to make that money back from other positions.

Take a look at your hand-tracking software and you will see that you are losing from the blinds. It's important to note how much though. Theoretically, if you lose every single hand from the blinds, you would lose 50bb for every 100 hands played as SB and 100bb for every 100 as BB. If your losing rate is significantly more than this, poker might not be for you as every player will still win now and then from the blinds when the whole table folds to them or they manage to catch a great hand for free on the BB.

For all intents and purposes, good players cut their losses at the blinds to around 40bb/100 for BB and 25bb/100 for SB. Take heart in knowing that there is still very little chance you will ever have a positive win-rate from the blinds, if you do, then welcome to the millionaire's club. But the more you cut your loss-rate on the blinds, the more money you make. If you can get your win-rate as BU to equal your loss-rate for the two blinds combined, you are going to be in good shape.

How to Play From the Blinds – Tight, Tight, and Tight!

There is a relatively simple solution to minimizing the losses incurred while playing from the blinds, play extremely tight. Too many players complete their SB bet with hands that aren't that good, and you see too many players 'protecting' their BB by calling pre-flop raises with borderline cards. It's crucial that you remember that even if you have a decent hand, you will still be in horrible table position from the blinds, and it really only makes sense to play the strongest of hands.

Example 1: Easy Fold

Effective stacks are at 100bb, and Luke is sitting in the BB. He gets dealt KhJs and UTG open-raises 4bb. What should Luke do?

If you said anything other than fold, you are going to lose a lot of money playing from the blinds. This is a hand you might play from BU, but not here. UTG is not a great table position, so if the player there is raising he has a pretty good range of hands. Luke's hand is not as good as most of the cards in Vader's range, and Luke would be out of position after the flop, giving him little leverage at the table.

The only worse position for this hand would be SB, because the BB would still play after you pre-flop, and you would have to pay extra to end up playing two possible opponents. Even if you think that you are a much better player than the raiser, the positional disadvantage negates that edge.

Example 2: Opponent Dependent

Effective stacks are still at 100bb, and Luke remains the BB and once again gets KhJs. The table folds, but BU open-raises 3bb. What should Luke do?

If you answered that he should look at what kind of player BU is before making a decision, you are starting to get the hang of this. Poker is so often opponent-dependent, and this is where the kind of player BU is really should determine Luke's course of action.

Firstly, since Vader is BU, he likely has a quite large range of starting hands he could have, some of which are worse than KJ offsuit. This hand is one of those that sits right on the border, and without any other information on Vader, it would probably be prudent to fold. If you have a HUD, then the following stats on Vader can help you make a decision:

ATS – Attempt to Steal (The percentage of time that he open-raises from CO, BU, or SB)

PFR – Pre-flop Raise (The percentage of time he make some sort of pre-flop raise)

In this case, ATS is the far more relevant statistic because PFR also includes 3bets which the player makes. If you can see the ATS specifically for BU, that is even better. Conservative players who have low stats here mean that we should probably fold, as it's not that common for him to play worse hands than KJ offsuit. But if we see an ATS of say 45, and a PFR of 23, then he plays quite loose and tries to steal a lot, and our marginal hand might not be so bad.

Example 3: Beware Suited Connectors

Effective stacks at 100b. Luke is now the SB and gets 7s8s. Everyone folds except BU, who raises 3bb. What should Luke do?

In this case, Luke would be doing himself a favor if he just folded. Why? Suited connectors are quite good cards, right? But they aren't very good here because of being so woefully out of position. Keep in mind that although they look good, suited connectors are rarely a winning hand when played out of position, and the standard play would just be to fold them away.

However, there are three instances where we might want to call with this hand:

• Vader is a gigantic fish and would not fold anything if we managed to hit our hand.
• Vader is extremely loose and loves to run huge bluffs from that position.
• Vader is extremely tight, and if we did hit our hand there are enough implied-odds due to the fact that we would probably get paid, a lot.

Otherwise, there is just not enough of a chance to make a profit from these hands, and TAG or LAG players would annihilate us with their advantage in position, or fold to value-bets and reduce our implied-odds to where it is not worthwhile.

Example 4: Bluffing It

Stacks are at 100bb; Luke is SB and gets As6s. The table folds to BU who raises 3bb and Luke responds with a 3bet of 9bb. Why?

Just like the previous example with suited connectors, low suited Ax is generally not a very good hand to play with out of position. However, the Ace does give the hand a bit more equity against the range of BU. Most of the time bad players will always call with a hand like this from the blinds and end up shedding money to the better players at the table.

There is one other option with a marginal hand like this; you could take the route that Luke took in the above example, and fire off a 3bet as a pre-flop bluff. This is a chance to make a little money off of marginal hands in the blinds (though is not to be used too often, as doing it every time is a sure path to losing).

In order to try this bluff, you really have to carefully consider who the opponent is. In this case, the following conditions should be met to really ensure that the bluff has a chance of success:

• Vader is in CO, BU, or SB (SB is especially good)
• Vader has a very high ATS stat
• Vader also has a high FoldTo3bet percentage
• The BB is not some sort of idiot or fish, and is not going to call the 3bet

If this is the case, than fire off that 3bet and see if you can't steal a little back from the player trying to steal your blind.