Learn to slow down when you have a big overpair and you’re playing against the blinds. If you have QVQ* and the flop is J47*5*, your hand may be good, but it’s not great if the blind bets into you. Except for another queen, there’s almost no card in the deck that I like on the turn or river.

A 54 or 54 gives you two pair, but what if he’s holding J*5* or A45*? How do you know that an ace or a king on the turn doesn’t beat you? Even a harmless looking deuce could make him two pair. Remember, he’s in the blind, so he could have anything.

So what do you do? You should usually just call with an overpair if the blind bets into you and there’s just the two of you in the hand. If there are other players in the hand, then you will sometimes want to raise to thin the field, which will increase your chances of winning the hand.

As a reminder, don’t forget that the entire nature of Texas hold ‘em (and any other poker game) is that it’s a game of concealed information. When the flop is K*7V4t and the big blind bets into you, you can think to yourself, “I’m going to fold my K484, because he’s in the blind, and his kicker could be better than mine. Or he might have two pair, and I just don’t want to play a guessing game and pay him off all the way to the river, never knowing for sure where I stand.”

You can think all that, just don’t say it out loud. The idea of playing differently against the blinds is a little-known concept among lower limit players, so you should want to be the one player in your game to take advantage of it. casinos

Next time you play in your usual hold ‘em game, I want you to keep track of every time you fold a hand on the flop when playing against the blind. We’re interested only in those times when you would have called a bet from a player not in the blind, but did not call simply because the player who bet was in the blind position. After you fold the hand, keep track of how much money you’ve saved yourself.

• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part4 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part3 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part2 (0)

A more common situation is when the flop comes and the big blind bets it out first. You're now in a difficult position as a caller, because you don't know why he's betting. Is he betting for value with a good hand, or is he taking a shot at bluffing and stealing the pot? Is he semi-bluffing with a weak, but improvable hand? Are you known as a high-card player, and he's giving you a chance to throw away your K*Q4 when the flop is 6*6*34? You just have to know your players.

My experience has been that the blinds usually do not attempt to bluff on the flop. If they bet first, it's because they have a hand with which they expect to win. You have to keep in mind that what it takes to win the hand depends largely on the flop. If the flop is all low cards, and the blind bets into a large field, he's not bluffing. He expects to win the hand. If the flop is weird-looking, like J*6*24, and the blind bets into you, it's because he usually expects to win the hand.

Over the years, I've developed a strategy for playing against the blinds that has, for me, yielded superior results. It's easy to understand and easy to remember, and you shouldn't have any trouble making it part of your hold 'em strategy also. Here's my rule for playing against the blinds: throw away slightly better than average hands if the blind bets into you on the flop.

Of course, what constitutes an average hand depends on the flop, your cards, your position, how many other players are in the hand, and your estimation of what the preflop action means.

There are several good reasons why this is a profitable strategy for you:
1. You're not going to win every hand after the flop anyway. You'll win only a fraction of the hands you play past the flop, and you will often have to get lucky to win some of those.

2. You have only one bet invested in the hand. It's not that expensive to let it go and wait for a hand where you can be the bettor, and not the caller.
3. You never really know what the blind has, so why play a guessing game? That's not the way to play poker.

4. You'll be calling the blind's bet fewer times than average, and when you do call, the blind will notice it. He will (correctly) put you on a very good hand. Because of that, he'll often check to you on the turn when you call on the flop, thus increasing your chances of winning the hand.

5. You will always have position on the blind, which means that you'll often be able to raise on the turn or river, thereby getting in an extra big bet from the losing hands. This benefit more than makes up for the times when you folded on the flop and forfeited a small bet with an average hand.

• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part5 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part3 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part2 (0)

You can rapidly make up for the blind's advantage by being especially attentive to how he plays from the flop on. You can use psychology and position to help read the blind's hand, but only after the flop.

If you're in a hand against several other players and one of them is the blind, you should be aware of the fact that all bets and raises are not created equal. A bet or a raise from the blind means something entirely different than it does when coming from one of the other players. A check-raise from the blind, especially on the flop, is an excellent clue about the strength of his hand.

A player in the blind who flops a strong hand will usually not be able just to bet, knock players out, and win the hand. Why? Well, the strength of his hand is situational and temporary. A blind who holds 8*3* when the flop is 8*5*34 will almost always have the best hand at that point. The problem for him is that there are more cards to come.

If this blind bets, he knows that the players who have overcards, a pair, a flush, or a straight draw will call, hoping to see one more card to make their hand. So he will check-raise on the flop in an attempt to knock these players out of the hand. It's a good move, and it often works. It also gives away his hand to the players astute enough to know that a check-raise from the blind usually means just what I've described.

Another reason that this blind cannot bet and win is that the draws will often have the right odds to call and possibly beat him. If he bets on the flop and gets called, it's now mathematically correct for his opponents to call again when he bets on the turn. Anyone with a draw will then have the right odds to see the final card and possibly make his hand. The check-raise is an effort to keep this very predictable scenario from happening. It's an attempt to drive players out of the hand by forcing them to call two bets cold.

• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part5 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part4 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part2 (0)

5. If you miss your hand, you've put yourself in the position of possibly having to bluff from an early position at the end of the hand.
6. A raise from one of the blinds tends to build the pot rather than make players fold. A player who has called a bet and has to call only one more bet-because the blind raised-will almost always call to see the flop.

A possible exception to my rule against raising from the blind position is when you have a big pair in the pocket and there are just one, two or maybe three other players in the hand. If you go back and look at the above list of disadvantages to raising before the flop, you'll see that they're lessened with fewer players in the hand. Let your knowledge of your opponents and your understanding of the game be your guide.

Even though I advise against raising from the blinds before the flop, I do recommend that you always reraise if someone has raised before the flop and your hand warrants it. I would not raise from the big blind before the flop with KK, QQ, or AK. If someone else raised first, however, I'd certainly go ahead and reraise.

The problem with playing against a player in the blind is that you don't have all the usual tools available to help you read his hand. You can't make anything of his hand based on position, because he didn't select his hand according to his position. He got it at random. You can't resort to psychology to help read the hand, because he didn't have any say about choosing the hand. You also can't rely on statistics to figure out what the hand is, because it could be anything, since he's in the blind.

The three best tools you have to help read hands (position, psychology and statistics) are all useless when playing against the blinds early in the hand. The player in the blind literally has a secret weapon to use against you, especially if he's in the big blind, no one raised before the flop, and he did not exercise the option of raising himself.

So, how do you play against the blinds? First, be aware of a few basic facts. About four-fifths of the 1,326 possible hands are hands that most players would not voluntarily play. That means that the blind will have less than a premium hand about 80% of the time. If the flop is something like A4Q*10*, it's likely that the blind does not have two good cards that will fit in well with this flop. He'll probably fold if you bet.

If the flop is 9*6*3*, and the big blind bets out, you can be sure the flop hit his hand, even though he has to be holding bad cards for that to happen. If he bets into a large field, if he check-raises on the flop, or if he reraises on the flop, you can be sure he has a good hand.

• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part5 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part4 (0)

When you're in a hand, you should think of everyone else in the hand as being in one of two categories:

1. In the blind
2. Not in the blind

There's a very important reason for this distinction. It's because you have two types of players in the hand, and they hold two entirely different types of hands. Generally, the players in the blinds have hands they would not otherwise enter the pot with. Players who voluntarily call the big blind and see the flop are telling you something about their hands: regardless of what you might think of their two cards, they think it's a hand worth a call.
Since they put their money in the pot before getting their cards, the blinds have totally random hands. If no one raises before the flop, you know nothing else about the big blind's hand. Since the small blind has to call a partial bet to stay in, he does give away some information when he decides to play the hand. If you're up against a player who usually folds when he's in the small blind, then if he just calls for the other portion of the blind, you may have learned something about his hand.

Sometimes, one of the players in the blinds will exercise his option to raise himself before the flop. Usually, he'll do that because he has an obviously great hand, such as AA or KK. He might just be particularly fond of his hand for other reasons.

I recommend that you never exercise the option of raising yourself when in the blinds, because I don't think the benefit of building the pot outweighs the many disadvantages:
1. You give away the fact that you have good cards early in the hand, which makes your opponents play more carefully against you from the beginning.

3. The extra small bet you got everyone to call before the flop might be less than what you could win if you had waited until the turn to raise or check-raise.
4. You're in terrible position (early) throughout the play of the entire hand.

• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part2 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part5 (0)
• Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part4 (0)