LO8 - BB Play

[1MoreFish4U]

This question has undoubtedly been approached in some ways before, but will try some specific questions & see if it helps. I'll preface it to say that I am a consistently successful player at 2-4 and 3-6 over a large hand sample and am also a winner at 5-10 although I don't play it as often.

My pto stats show my BB Won/hand as(0.10). My VP in position is 33% and Went to SD% is 41%. I defend my BB to steal attempts 80% of the time (I think this is too much). I should mention that the BB gets raised about 20% of the time.

MY PFR% from BB is 6.8% - usually shorthanded which lead me to beleve it's too low. My Raise 1st% in BB is 0.11% (UGH).

I am playing with an average of 6 players of which about 3.5 usually see the flop.

The games are usually very aggressive from preflop to river.

One or 2 maniacs regularly at every table.

My BB stats are as good as/better than any other regular player that I have a reasonable sample size from.

What can I do to improve. Help will be much appreciated. Thanks

[TxRedMan]

quit defending your BB so much.

i had a similar problem back in the day before i got PT- i was defending my SB (lol) too much, and I just gave up calling raises from the blinds with junk, because regardless of the odds you're always OOP and most of the time drawing at dominated draws when you do connect.

[1MoreFish4U]

Thank you for the reply & I agree - I just haven't set myself any guidelines.

What do you think of this approach to the BB defense?

any A2; any AA; any KK ss or better; any A3; A ss with 4 & paint; 4 cards 9 & up ss; any 3 bike cards.

What to add, what to leave out?

This is assuming its for a single raise and the raising standards in the game are quite loose.

[berserk]

I think defending guidelines would depend on how many people are coming to the flop. Heads up, something like 89tq is pretty awful and almost certainly not worth defending with but if the pot looks like its going to be 3-4 ways, I'd certainly defend.

Any 23 multiway seems reasonable too for one more bet, as does something marginal like 245 or a5xxs. I think its hard to come up with clear cut guidelines unless you differentiate between the number of people seeing the flop when your blind is raised and the solidness of the player doing the raising.

[Buzz]

Fish - It's hard to specifically answer your questions about big blind defense.

You may be defending your big blind too much. But then again, maybe not. If you're only getting raised 20%, maybe it's because you tend to defend.

I think there's a side benefit to defending your big blind. I think you are less likely to face aggression in other situations if you seem to not easily give way to aggression when you have posted your blind.

Face it. It's harder to play against aggressive play than passive play. You can probably turn over-agressive play by
your opponents to your advantage. But it's not exactly always easy to do that. For example, when someone makes it two bets to you, expecting you to get out of the way, you might make a big mistake and fold what would have been the winning hand. You should rather prefer to make it two bets when you want it to be two bets.

But having written the above, you don't want to over-defend your big blind. Usually when you get to see the flop for the blind post, a hand that wouldn't have been worth voluntarily playing isn't worth continuing beyond the flop anyhow. In other words, what is trash before the flop is usually still trash after the flop.

In a game with not too much pre-flop raising, I generally defend my big blind the first three times it's raised at a table with unknowns (depending). Thereafter, big blind defense adds about 25% value to a marginal or sub-standard hand.

I think that's working for me. I don't feel like my big blind is singled out for attacks. Some opponents seem to get raised almost every time they post by other opponents who seem to be trying to intimidate them into giving up their big blind.

In a game where pre-flop raising is the order of the day, and where people generally do not seem to defend their big blinds, I add about 25% value to a marginal or sub-standard hand for big blind defense.

A hand like 8-9-T-J pr 8-9-T-Q is not worth playing, in my humble opinion, even if double suited, and even increasing it's value by 25% for big blind defense.... though it's close for 8-9-T-J if double suited.... maybe sometimes....

The small blind is generally trivial in the scheme of things, not worth defending.

Buzz

[1MoreFish4U]

Berserk - Good points. I should be more specific. I am only referring to situations where the preflop raiser does it habitually and could and does have 'any 4', and I the table situation means that it is unlikely that I will be playing him heads up.

Buzz - although in my overall stats I am raised about 20% of my BB, as stated above I am more concerned with games that have a player or 2 with preflop raise % in the 25-30% range and a couple of others that are 10 - 12 %. This makes it likely that almost every BB will be raised with no regard for whether the raiser will be played back at or not.

I am comfortable with my SB play at this point. I almost think that my best approach in the BB would be to treat it as a SB and play accordingly.