Stemming losses from the blinds

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 07 July 2010 / Leave a Comment

Although you can never profit from playing out of the blinds long term, it is critical that you try and reduce your losses as much as possible by plugging as many leaks as you can.

No player can win long term from the blinds in any form of flop poker. If you use a piece of software like PokerTracker or Hold'em Manager, use the position statistics option and look at how you do from each position. Over a decent sample size, you will be in the red whenever you are in the blinds (but hopefully well in the green from other positions to compensate).

This is simply because you are being forced to bet before you see your hand, and that although in position pre flop, you will have to play all of the big money streets out of position - a very dangerous dual combination of factors.

Although you can never profit from playing out of the blinds long term, it is critical that you try and reduce your losses as much as possible by plugging as many leaks as you can. The blinds have two key areas that often trick players into leaking more money than they should - most critically the great pot odds on offer and pre flop position.

As you have already been forced to bet in the blinds, any standard raise will end up giving you a cheaper price on your hand than you would normally face had you not been forced to bet. Not only this, but you get to evaluate all of the pre flop action before deciding what to do.

This can look like a great thing when staring down at speculative or marginal hands and a raise - but it has major problems at the low and mid stakes. The key problem with the price is that it is not what it seems. As there is basically zero chance of you getting to showdown without calling more, much larger bets (all out of position as well), and a low chance of making a hand that will win at showdown with a speculative hands, the actual pot odds are much worse than they seem.

Weak players slowly (or quickly for that matter) bleed extra money from the blinds through habitual defence of marginal hands due to the good price they are getting. They remember the few times they won a big pot with a connector or a small pair, but forget all of the small and medium size pots they lose when they either miss or flop a low/under pair and try and call down. Good players do not lose this money, and in the war of attrition over the blinds the money they don't lose ends up giving them a sizeable edge through simply saving money.

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