Stats Discussion: Defending Blinds

[linuxrocks]

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For the next week, if the (CO or) BTN opens and everyone else folds to you in the BB(/SB), never call. Fold or reraise.

This should help you get a hang of it (and is basically how I play anyways).

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I gotta try that. Thanks

[Paul Thomson]

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don't worry about defending your blinds. imo it doesn't apply to cash games to any relevant extent. its best to play very tight from the blinds and avoid playing oop w/o solid hands.

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people play poorly from the blinds, i find blind v blind battles to be one situation where people play like [censored]. Similar to reraised pots.

A multitabling tag who is raising your bb every orbit needs to be dealt with. Simply giving up your blinds isnt the answer, but being more careful with/how to go about defending them is important.

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Listen to this advice. A concrete way of dealing with this is the following logic:

When an aggressive loose player raises you from the CO or Button, then you should not only rereaise with your strong hands but also OCCASIONALY with your small pairs and suited connectors.

I stole this logic from a much better smarter player. When you do decide to defend them.

The most common lines are for marginal hands are:
lead flop.
check-call flop. lead turn.

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This is very transparent and I destroy the people who try to do this vs me.

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You are right. It is very transparent. And at higher levels, you'll get blown off your hands often. I bluff raised someone on the turn yesterday when they used this line. At the same time, I use it all the time at NL200 and I find it very successfull, over a relatively small sample size.

I'm just trying to keep it simple. And this lines were espoused by a very good high-limit player. Although, she also remarked that it was transparent.

[bilbo-san]

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Yep, I know how OOP sucks. I often call in the BB when I should be re-raising. I don't know how to play it right. That said, why would they play weak after re-raising ? He made it seem like it's just too easy to destroy the BB after re-raising. To me, on the button, a c-bet from a BB with only 40% of his stack behind looks quite intimidating.

In short, I suck at playing the BB and the button when BB re-raises [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Just trying to understand the pitfalls.

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We were talking about the check-call/lead turn, and the lead flop line, with moderate hands, and how both of those lines stink against good players. We weren't talking about re-raised pots.

In re-raised pots, position becomes, ironically, less important. From the BB especially, if you re-raise a monster, then lead, as long as stacks are about 100 BB, it should be pretty easy to play. If you are just CBing something that whiffed, that should be easy too. Some WA/WB situations like KK(or AQ) on A-high flops can be tricky, but there's lots of hands like that on 2+2 every day.

The biggest mistake re-raisers make is raising too small. Even when you re-raise with 55, you've gotta re-raise big. You don't want them thinking about implied odds. This is because often even solid players will call with stuff like T9s for "implied odds", but then when the flop "sort of" hits them, they'll forget about that and suddenly decide to float the flop with one pair/weak draw. That can cost them a lot of money when you hold AA, but you unfortunately don't always have AA, and you don't want them floating a Q96 flop when you hold 88.

[JustToast]

Good discussion since I posted this last night! Thats what I was looking for.

Yes I play my BB quite a bit in stats, but often times it's to a minraise or something stupid (50NL on Party) so this stat is skewed.

Assuming a loose button raiser (Att to Steal > 50%) and you're in the BB, what kinds of hands do you re-raise, what kinds of hands do you call with?