Posts Tagged ‘bet’
Poker – Playing Against The Blinds Part2
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.
Texas Hold Em Poker Poker WebsiteTags: bet, game, online casino, poker
Poker – Playing Against The Blinds
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.
Online Casinos List Of The Best Online Casinos
Tags: bet, blinds, online casino, poker