focusing on playing the blinds
Solid play from the blind positions is important to being a winning poker player, especially in Texas Holdem poker. More players should focus on blind play and consider it near the same importance as starting hands outside the blinds.
If you were simply to be away from a land based casino texas holdem poker table when it was your turn to take the blinds, you would lose about three big bets in an hour ,assuming the button orbits the table four times an hour. On the other hand , a solid win rate is one big bet an hour. Obviously, to make that win rate, you would have to make four big bets an hour when in the other positions .
One difference between experienced Texas Holdem players and less experienced players is that a good player will more often bet second pair when good and fold it when it’s a loser. So even though everyone gets the same cards in a game with very high short term random luck factor, the good player will extract a little positive value from somewhat good situations and save from losing a little negative value in somewhat bad situations. That phenomenon is not difficult to understand – make the most of every situation no matter how small.
Better players take more value from the blinds while losing less while in their own blinds. Some players go after other blinds. But that is actually the less important . Playing from the blinds well not only has the benefit of earning us some money, it encourages weaker players to similarly play from the blinds, where they will tend to play in a less profitable way , not just because they will play relatively poorly from position, because the more hands less experienced players play, the more likely they are to get frustrated and go on tilt. It’s an absolute: if you play with players who do go on tilt, doing small things to encourage them to play more hands directly leads to them going to tilt more often.
Some players don’t understand the concept of playing when you are an underdog, but have pot odds to do so. This is one big difference between great players and merely good ones. If someone raises your big blind and everyone folds, you’re getting 3.5 to 1 on calling the raise. It does not matter at all if your opponent is a favorite in this situation. What matters is if those 3.5 to 1 pot odds are favorable to you. You don’t have to win anywhere near half the time to make this call be profitable. You merely need to extract more money from the pot than you put into it. That’s it. You should be quite happy to regularly get back the equity of 1.5 or 1.7 or 2.1 small bets. Even 1.1 is a good return. It makes no difference at all if your opponent does better than that. What matters to us is to take the most profitable move.
One of the most intimidating plays in Texas Holdem poker is to call a raise before the flop from the big blind, and check after the flop when the flop comes out a bunch of low rags. The point here is that playing against a player in the big blind much less so in the small blind is a difficult thing to do especially if they are an experienced player. The range of hands the blind player could have is not easy to pinpoint, for one thing. Players often say they hate playing from the blinds against a pre flop raiser because it is to play against a player who has better cards or thinks so. That’s true, but the reverse is also true. It’s very difficult to play against a focused player in the big blind who could be playing a very wide variety of cards.