Mike Caro's Small Blind Essay Contest

[Howard Beale]

In the 12/25/06 issue of Poker Player Newspaper Mike Caro's column contains this contestregarding small blind play. Due to the contest rules it's a bit long but I find his main idea to be so surprising (at least to me) that I wanted to post it here and read 2p2's reaction.

From the article:

One of the worst things you can do is routinely raise from the small blind position. I'm not saying you should never raise, but if you do it very often, you're eating away at your bankroll. And I'm not talking about just hold 'em. I'm talking about Omaha high, Omaha high-low, Lowball, and whatever other poker games use the traditional blind structure in the future

and

Now I'm going to tell you the most important thing you can ever learn about playing the small blind: You should usually just call if you have a playable hand, even a fairly strong one. Even if you have a pair of aces to start with in hold 'em, you should often consider just calling. You'll usually overrule this consideration and decide to raise, but a call isn't out of the question. An exception would be if you have a pair of aces and there are at least two other callers already involved in the pot or if the lone caller came from a late position, making your raise seem like a natural power play, whether or not you have a strong hand. Then you should almost always raise.

I do a fair amount of raising from the small blind. If there are a bunch of limpers to me and I see something like Q-Q or A-Ks I almost always raise. If I'm reading Mr. Caro correctly it is the wrong thing to do.

Perhaps some of you would like to enter his contest. I'm not theoretically or mathematically talented enough to try it but I'd like to get a discussion going on it.