If there are several blinds, do you go all-in or fold?

One of the quickest signs that a player isn’t the best is their tendency to overthink things. Considerations like playing cards one way and not another are definitely symptoms of those who want to reach the top need to learn to let go. Blinds

Although certain concessions are made in poker to avoid wasting too much time on simple decisions, by and large these should be based on playing lines that avoid the mistakes we already know about Decide which one is the right one to choose from. Since the game is constantly changing, it’s interesting to consider what strategies might have been wrong in the past and can be part of a profitable strategy today.

When it comes to knowledge as a player, it is normal to find mistakes from books that have been on the market for more than 15 years. From the most basic details (like raising 3 blinds or more preflop throughout the entire tournament) to the more controversial ones (like defending the big blind). It’s normal to see players betting to survive in tournaments until only a few blinds are left, but there are also extreme individuals who can’t find the fine line between going all-in and folding. We should get into the habit of asking ourselves why we do what we do and whether it makes sense in the context of that decision.

When we are running low on chips, we need to consider other alternatives to push or fold.

While it is important to consider the potential for exploitative play, and many mistakes in this direction like to be justified, we also need to avoid tactics that can be exploited. One way to achieve this is to move away from self-imposed rules such as “only go all-in or fold if the blinds are less than 12” and instead build logical thought patterns that make our games more dynamic and less Surrender to predictability. maturity. If the opponent realizes, for example, that at some point in the game we will stop defending the big blind unless we have a good hand, then we are in trouble.

If we believe the big blind will be defended, then not being able to defend with less than 15 blinds is a mistake inherited from long-outdated strategies. More than once I’ve heard colleagues complain about someone defending an open raise with a hand like J9 and then losing to a combination, and it’s really hard to convince them that it wasn’t a mistake. In fact, they should add this move to their arsenal. This observation is primarily made by cash game players, which is understandable since it makes sense to play conservative defense in these games. However, only by understanding the main issues can we find the right way to deal with these situations.

Unlike most cash games, tournaments also have an ante bet, and the additional mandatory bets for the entire table are the small blind and the big blind. When stakes come into play, there’s a ton of dead money in every pot in a tournament before the tournament even starts. This makes it very attractive to raise 2 to 2.5 big blinds preflop because by the time everyone folds we already have about that amount. Again, this affects our situation by forcing a bet, since with a minimum raise we need around 20% equity in the long run to make a profitable call. Do you know which hands have at least this percentage relative to most open raising ranges? Virtually all of them, including the 72o, are around 30%. In other words, from a mathematical perspective, there is no problem defending against a min-raise with almost any hand (if an ante is present).

This count works when we have a high stakes stack and Es. There are many ways to earn equity, but it’s also crucial when we’re short on chips. The dynamics of the game change significantly, but as the stacks get smaller, the game becomes easier because the pressure of post-flop street decision-making is gone. There aren’t many opportunities to make big mistakes after the flop, and when we get a hand, we go all out and double down. Sometimes going all-in is the right decision based on the strength of our hand, and sometimes we have to fold, but it is important to understand that there is a gray area where we can call with speculative hands to increase our chances of competing for the title.

With this, I’m not saying that the correct way to play with a small stack in the big blind is to call a lot. In fact, I recommend playing as aggressively as possible and using options like 3-bet all-in whenever possible, and using a relatively wide hand range. But it’s important to understand that almost nothing in poker is black and white, and there may be situations where things that are generally true may not be true. As I always say, our job is to take the necessary precautions to bring the situation into balance so that fewer and fewer factors are overlooked.