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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.
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Tags: bet, blinds, online casino, poker