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Gutoid 08-14-2006 01:41 PM

Question about playable pockets in Small Blind
 
In No Limit Texas Holdem, if everyone folds to the Small Blind during the first minute of tournament play (before game situation has been established) what is the minimum starting hand one should play when out of position heads up against the Big Blind ?

DeuceSeven 08-14-2006 02:06 PM

Re: Question about playable pockets in Small Blind
 
I play with anything, raise with any pair, Ax, any 2 cards higer then a 9. I get more aggressive as the blinds and antes are a bigger portion of my stack.

AKQJ10 08-14-2006 03:58 PM

Re: Question about playable pockets in Small Blind
 
Much depends on your read of the BB.

I got my present default behavior from Gordon's book, and it seems to work OK in SSNL where a lot of the BBs I face are passive. If the BB is likely to let me limp in, I limp in almost everything and bet a lot on the flop (occasionally check-raise, but not too much as it gets expensive), slowing down to resistance depending on my precise holding.

If the BB is likely to raise your attempt to limp in for the completion, then you want at least a bit of a hand (Ax, 22, possibly 53s but consider that it's a strict semibluff because it has no showdown value), but you also want to raise when you do play. Alternatively, you can trap by completing with a huge preflop hand (say TT, AK) planning to three-bet when your aggressive neighbor raises to pick off the easy money. (That idea is very specifically from Gordon.) If you always play monsters like that and always play non-monsters by raising, you'll be easy to read, so after a while you certainly want to mix your plays up.

When I do face someone that's going to raise my completions, I'm generally willing to spend half a big blind finding out this fact.

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what is the minimum starting hand one should play when out of position

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I like the way you're thinking! It's true that you will be OOP, which somewhat argues in favor of deciding the issue preflop with a raise.


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