Texas Holdem Small Big Blind

Posted on 7/30/2022by admin

Blind leakage is an exceptional video by James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney that covers everything you need to know about profitable blind play (both in the SBandBB) in Texas Hold'em cash games.

Texas Holdem Blind Structure
Small Blind Big Blind In Texas Holdem

Typically Texas Hold'em is played with a big and a small blind. The small blind is half of the big blind. The small blind is the player to the left of the dealer. The big blind is the player to the left of the small blind. The big blind is the starting bet for every hand. A big blind is a mandatory bet used in poker variations that typically don't have antes, such as Texas Hold 'Em. It is paid by the player two seats to the left of the dealer or the dealer button. The player one seat to the left of the button pays a small blind that is usually half the big blind's size. Battling with the Big Blind. Blind battles are prevalent in both cash games and tournaments. The psychology involved in blind battles is almost as important as the quality of your hands. The problem is that being out of position from small blind puts you at the disadvantage.

Ten Big Blinds and Under. Poker is real easy now. With this stack, you can play unexploitable poker. Using Independent Chip Modeling and the Nash Equilibrium you can solve every situation with your stack size and hand versus however many random hands are left to act behind you. With two blinds, the small blind is posted by the player immediately clockwise from the button, and the big blind is posted by the player two positions clockwise from the button. With more than two.

The small blind is a very tricky position to play from in Texas Hold'em. If you were to track your performance in each position at the table using a program such as Poker Tracker, you will find that the small blind is a losing position overall.

The best players in the world find it difficult to win money from the small blind, and that's just the way it is.

When playing in the small blind our aim is to try and reduce the amount of money we will lose, so that we can increase our overall wins from the other seats at the table.

The problem with playing in the small blind.

The fundamental reason as to why the small blind is such a difficult and losing position in the hand is due to the fact that we are going to be first to act in every round after the flop. Being out of position means that our opponents will get to see how we act before they do, giving them more information on the strength of our hand than we have on theirs.

This will put us at a big disadvantage throughout the hand, as any experienced player knows how important a role that position plays in poker, especially in Texas Holdem.

Therefore we should know that when playing from the small blind, we are going to be on an uphill struggle throughout the hand. So a good small blind strategy would to not embark on this struggle in the first place, and simply fold before the flop. If we do intend to get involved when in the small blind, we will want to have a very strong starting hand to compensate for the fact that we are going to be out of position for every round after the flop.

Using starting hand selection to save money in the small blind.

By using solid starting hand selection we can increase our chances of winning the hand despite the fact that we are out of position. Even though the small blind may be a losing seat overall, it does not mean that we will lose money on every individual hand that we play from that particular position. So don’t be afraid to enter a pot if you have a strong enough hand to do so, but always remember to tighten your starting hand requirements when in the small blind.

A common small blind strategy mistake.

A big mistake when playing in the small blind is being under the notion that its worth seeing a flop for a little extra, as half of your blind is already in the pot. However, whilst having half of your blind in the pot does improve the pot odds you have to call, there is the possibility that you are setting yourself up for bigger losses than you might expect.

The extra half a bet that you have to call to see a flop may look innocent, but in real fact it is a very dangerous play, especially for the less experienced players. The big losses do not lie in the extra half a bet lost on every flop that we miss, but in the hands where we have half a holding, and put more money in the pot than necessary to try and find out if we are ahead.

Never feel committed to a pot simply because you have paid your blind. It is not profitable to try and protect money you have put in the pot through the blinds, so play the hand like any other.

Playing in the small blind example.

Let say we are in the small blind and there have been a few limpers before us. We look down and see that were are holding K 7. This looks like a half decent hand and so we decide to call because it’s only half a blind more to see a flop.

The flop comes down 9 T K giving us top pair with a 7 kicker, not a bad hand.

Having top pair we decide to bet out around ¾ of the pot to see how the other players react. A few players fold, but an opponent in one of the later positions raises us 3 times our original bet, and the action is now back onto us.

In this situation our opponent could have a range of hands; they could have a king with a worse kicker, or a king with a better kicker. They may have two pair, a set, or even a straight or a flush draw. There are so many possibilities and we have little information on which hand he could have because we are out of position. But seeing as we have a half decent hand we decide to call.

The turn makes the board 2, which doesn't improve our hand and probably made little difference to our opponent's.

Because we are a little unsure about the strength of our hand we decide to check, and our opponent then comes out with a pot-size bet. Now we are still unsure if our opponent does have a better hand, or whether he is just exploiting our weakness because we checked. However, by this time a pot-size bet is quite large, so we decide to let the hand go and cut our losses.

Small blind example evaluation.

When reading through the hand above you probably recognized the situation all too well. Having a half decent hand but coming up against strength from another opponent and being out of position is all too common.

These situations are difficult to play because we have so little information on our opponents and we can never be sure if we do have the best hand. In the hand mentioned above, this problem could have easily been avoided by folding pre-flop, saving us a decent amount of money in the process.

The poor position in this hand has caused us a lot of problems, and it always will when you are playing from the small blind.

Although K 7 looks like a reasonable hand, it just proves to be the type of hand that is going to cause us problems after the flop if we hit any part of it. So if we are determined to enter a pot when calling from the small blind, we have to play cards that have potential to hit a very big hand.

By sticking with cards like suited connectors and pocket pairs, we will either hit a big hand or we wont, which saves us the trouble of deciding what to do after the flop. A marginal hand is the last thing we want to hit when out of position, so don’t try and put up a battle with them and be prepared to let them go when you come up against action.

Small blind strategy evaluation.

The small blind is a very tricky position to play from, so we should try and avoid entering too many pots from this position unless we have a premium hand. Calling from the small blind will usually cause more problems than it is worth, so try and avoid doing so unless you have a hand that has some potential.

The small blind is the worst position to be in, so don’t expect too much from the hand because you are always going to be at a disadvantage to ourself money in the long run if you folded every marginal hand instead of calling.

Loosen Up!

Seeing as we have already invested some money into the pot (albeit involuntarily), we should typically do our best to defend this money. Remember thatwe get a better price on any cold-call since 1bb has already been invested.

The most common mistake that many players have been making for years is defending their big-blind too tightly. Even good players were not aware of this for a long time – the common advice was “always play tight from the blinds, we will be out-of-position postflop”.

Let’s have a look at some typical ranges and see how we can be a little tougher when defending our big-blind.

BB Ranges

BB vs BTN 2.5x

As we can see the recommended defending range from the big-blind against a BTN open is quite wide.

There are 3 colours here

Light Red – Value 3bet
Dark Red – Bluff 3bet
Dark Blue – Cold-Call

It is important to remember that the size that the open-raisers use will change our defending frequency quite considerably. So if someone opens for a min-raise we should defend many more hands, while if someone opens for 3bb we should defend considerably less hands.

BB vs CO 3x

It makes sense to consider defending ranges vs a CO 3bb open rather than a 2.5bb seeing as it’s potentially going to be more common. Assuming our opponent open-raises to 2.5bb we should widen this defending range.

BB vs MP 3x

Same kind of stuff here, just tighter. Notice that the bluffing range consists entirely of speculative hands (more on this later).

The general idea here is that playability is a little more important when out-of-position, whereas our pot-equity is not necessarily that much of a factor. We won’t get to realise our equity as much when OOP by seeing a showdown, so it’s better that we have a non-dominated high-playability hand in our 3betting range such as a suited-connector.

We will see that assuming we are in position then equity is more important while playability becomes a little less important. This will be reflected in the BB vs SB ranges.

BB vs UTG 3x

BB vs SB 2.5x

BB vs SB is a very important situation in BB defense. Why so? It’s essentially going to be the most profitable BB situation we face. In today’s games SB can potentially open very wide and we are guaranteed to always have position postflop if we decide to defend.

So there is no reason why we shouldn’t be defending very aggressively with a wide range. Against a 2.5x open we should be defending roughly 50% of the time. 15% of the time by 3betting and 35% of the time by cold-calling.

A common mistake is not realising how wide we can go with our 3bet bluffs. It’s not necessarily intuitive that something like K5o is a good bluffing hand BB vs SB because at first glance it seems overly weak.

Assuming we face a min-raise in this situation we should be defending over 70% of hands. In fact there is a pretty reasonable argument for defending any two cards in the BB vs a SB min-raise.

Notice also that the types of hands that we 3bet have changed. Instead of 3betting speculative hands like suited-connectors, our raw pot-equity is a little bit more valuable than our playability. The idea is we get to realise this equity more fully when we have position and can control the action a little better.

So the hands that are selected as part of our 3bet bluff range are all high-equity hands such as Ax, Kx, and Qx holdings.

The Unique BB Spot

We mentioned earlier that there was a unique feature that the big-blind possesses. Imagine for a minute that we are in the CO facing a UTG open. We know that our opponent folds 75% of the time to 3bets. This is actually enough folds for us to generate automatic profit with a 3bet. So can we 3bet any 2 cards?

Actually no, we can’t. We can potentially expand our 3betting range but we need to be aware of the fact that there are still 3 players to act behind us. So 3betting something like 32o for automatic profit would be a mistake. We’d start to lose a ton of money when one of the remaining opponents wakes up with something or decides to make a play!

In the BB however, we can literally 3bet anything because we are closing the action. So if BTN who has 80% fold-to-3bet decides to open-raise and SB folds, it’s correct for us to 3bet 32o regardless of how terrible the hand is.

Overcalling/Squeezing

There is another situation we can face when in the BB. A player open-raises and he gets a cold-caller. In the BB we now have the option to overcall or squeeze.

A rough idea of what our ranges should look like in this spot can be found below. But first, the meaning of the colours:

Light Red – Value Squeeze
Green – Squeeze OR Overcall
Dark Blue – Overcall
Red – Bluff Squeeze assuming both players aren’t calling stations

Firstly notice how wide the overcalling range can become. Almost any 2 suited cards can be fine for an overcall.

On the other hand, notice how there are no offsuit hands in our overcalling range whatsoever. This is because they do not play well multi-way.

In a multi-way situation we’d prefer to make a straight or a flush as opposed to a weak 1 pair holding which offsuit hands typically make.

Also notice how we have hands in green that we should play a “mix” strategy with. In other words we can sometimes call and sometimes squeeze.

This is just a rough guide however. The exact squeezing range we should use depends on the position of the opener, the position of the caller, and the sizings used. We should also take into consideration whether we are out-of-position against just one opponent or both of them.

Iso-Raising or Checking

The final situation we can face is when we have the opportunity to either raise or to check-back when facing either limpers or a SB complete.

Remember that we shouldn’t feel any huge pressure to raise in this spot with marginal hands since we are already guaranteed to see a free flop by just checking back. In other words we should mainly just raise decent hands and check back the rest.

What qualifies as a “decent” hand will depend largely on whether we have position (in the case of facing a SB complete), or find ourselves out-of-position (facing a limp from any other position).

Assuming we are out-of-position we should typically raise a tight range of hands for pure value, such as the following...

Assuming that we are in position facing a SB complete, the number of hands we can profitably raise increases dramatically.

Putting it Together

If there is one thing we should take away from this article it’s that we shouldn’t be scared to defend our BB aggressively. The offshoot of this is that we are going to be finding ourselves postflop with weaker hands than we are used to. In order to deal with this we should also invest time in learning how to play postflop when OOP.