Small Blind Play
In January, I made a decision to address one of the BIGGEST leaks in my own game….BLIND PLAY in Cash Games!
Playing from the SB (Small Blind) is by far the most difficult position to be in any Poker Game. It puts the player in the absolute WORST position possible post flop. I will address some of my thoughts on blind play in this excerpt….please as always….take the information I provide as simply an opinion of how to look at a situation.
Most players justify playing way too many hands in the blinds simply because the blinds come around so often that they feel they are giving up too much if they don’t start calling raises with garbage like J7s in the small. This simply isn’t the case you are better off being patient in most cases since your good hands will get paid off.
If you live by this mantra….DO NOT PLAY FROM THE SMALL BLIND UNLESS YOU RAISE….IF THERE IS A LATE POSITION RAISE…YOU MUST HAVE A HAND TO RERAISE WITH PREFLOP!
This strategy allows you to do 2 important things:
(1) It allows you to take the lead on the pot from a late position raiser….who by the way may be opening the bottom end of their range on the button or cutoff. When the late position raiser is facing a preflop 3 bet, they are usually aware they will face some form of C-BET (Continuation Bet) on the flop. Knowing this, the late position raiser must consider the strength of their hand before continuing.
(2) It will force you to throw away marginal holdings you may just complete with. This is critical….there is nothing worse than trying to play Ax suited out of position! We have all tried to play a flush/straight draw out of position. It just looks WEIRD and there are few spots in which you are ever given the right price (Pot Odds and Implied) to continue and even fewer times when making thoise hands do you ever get fully paid off!
By raising/reraising from the SB, you clarify/establish your position against the button. BEWARE of sneaky opponents. They may be Level 2/3 thinkers and simply flat your raise and float the flop hoping to take the pot away on the turn. Vary your postflop play….C-BET 60% of the time, Check Raise 10% of the time, Check Call 10%, and Check Fold the other 10% of the time.
Here is a chart representing my position statistics from the month of February 2009. Please notice position SB which is the Small Blind. Last year, I was losing a tremendous amount of money from this position….after applying this strategy to my game, I am now profitable by $1,800+, minus the cost of the blind over 30K hands!
If you take a look at applying this thought process to your game before making that decision to just “Complete”, good things will happen!
