Inside Online Poker : Got the basics? Get the NUTS!

Blinds in Holdem create an incentive for a player to join in and/or attack. Without anything being wagered initially , there would be no reason for an good player to make the first bet, even with an excellent hand. If all players around the table fold, he wins nothing. With no blinds or antes, the first bet is simply a target, and the other players could just fold without an unassailable hand.

By making the player to the dealer's left post a small blind (SB) and the player to his left pay a big blind (BB - usually double the small blind), Holdem becomes a lot more interesting and filled with action. Each hand begins as a battle for the blinds, and once that battle begins, the pot starts growing, and the reasons to play grow with it. Low-stakes games rarely end with the first raise; in high-stakes games, especially no-limit tournament final tables, the first raise often does end the hand.

Even though blinds serve a purpose similar to antes, they function quite differently. Antes are 'dead money.' Anteing merely entitles you to receive cards; you still must make a bet to engage in the action. If you post one of the blinds, though, your money counts as a bet (it's 'live'). If you post the BB, and no one else plays, you win the hand. You won't have won much - only the SB (which is usually half the size of the BB, although it can vary from one-third to two-thirds of its size). While any win helps, more often the fact that your blind money counts as a bet will make getting involved in many other hands easier, because you're getting to play for a discount price.

Correct blind play: making the best of a bad situation
When, why, and how you should play when you're getting that discount is a widely misunderstood subject. Let's start with a key principle behind correct blind play. Some situations are natural money losers, and the hands when you post the blinds fall into that category. If you had to post the BB on every hand, you'd get slaughtered: you're in early position (bad), and investing money before you see your cards (also bad). Over the long haul, you will lose money on your blind hands - not every time, of course, but on balance. The key is to lose as little as possible, so you can make money overall by taking advantage of your premium situations, like when you sit in late position.

Let's start with an elementary blind play decision. You've posted the £30 BB in a no-limit Holdem game; your neighbour to the right has posted the £15 SB. Everyone folds around to the button, who decides to raise it to a total of £90 (a £60 raise). The small blind folds, and now it's up to you. Does this hand continue, or does the button win £45?

Understand the risks
Assuming you have a plausible hand (more on that in a moment), you have to assess your risk/reward ratio, and to do that, you have to decide whether you're going to try to win the pot by calling and then winning on the flop, or by raising and trying to win right away.

Raising will cost you £60 plus the amount you raise; let's say you raise an additional £180, a total bet of £240. The tricky part is to understand what you're trying to win with your raise: you're trying to claim only £135. Some people mistakenly think 'After I call, my raise is giving me a shot at a £195 pot' (in other words, thinking that their £180 raise might buy them £195). They're wrong: the pot only becomes £195 after you call. Your £240 bet is a shot at the money already in the pot, and that was only £135 when you made your move!

There's a mighty big difference between risking £180 to win £195 and risking £240 to win £135. The first play (were the numbers accurate) doesn't even have to succeed half the time to be profitable. The second has to work 64% of the time just to break even (actually a bit more than that when you remember you're paying a rake).

The maths changes when you try to win by calling and then making a decision on the flop. Your £60 call cannot win the pot. All calling does is give you the right to make a play later in the hand, and that will necessarily mean risking more money then. If the flop is favourable enough, it may not be much of a risk; if the flop is unfavourable, your money may be gone and your only remaining chance will be an opportunity to lose more.

Your £60 call creates a £195 pot. If you assume that you will only make a move at the pot when the flop is favourable (good players' actions are more complex than that), you can call, in a purely mathematical sense, if the flop will be favourable 30.8% of the time (60 divided by 195). Whether hitting a flop is easier or more difficult than that depends to some extent on your hand, and to some extent on how easy or hard it is to outplay your opponents on the flop. How well you think you can get 'paid off' when you hit your hand also makes a huge difference, and remember, it's much harder to get paid off handsomely when you're acting out of position - and that's exactly what you're doing when playing from the blind.

Defending blinds ain't easy - no matter what the game
In limit poker, it initially seems easier to defend the blinds because the investment odds are usually better. The button can't raise as much, so you don't face as much immediate pressure. The problems in analyzing limit poker defending don't end there, though. It's much harder to win the pot with a re-raise, because the amount you're re-raising isn't enough to knock out someone who had raised from the button; even if he was stealing, he'll usually call and look at the flop.

Similarly, when you get a favourable flop, you can't usually win it with one bet. You will have to risk seeing a turn card also, and make a second bet. In limit poker, the raiser can't put as much pressure on you, but you can't put as much pressure on him. You'll probably have to attack him twice, and be out of position each time.

That's why even though the relative cheapness makes it first appear easier to defend the blinds in limit poker, before the hand is over, it winds up being probably just as hard as in no-limit or pot-limit. You just face a different collection of problems. Playing the hand out of position on the flop, turn, and (if you get that far) the river is a huge disadvantage. Each time the opportunity comes to bet, you are going to have to act first. Your opponent will have more information than you when it's his turn to act, and that's very bad news.

Position is all-important
Suppose you call and you do hit the flop. Do you bet? If you do, your opponent still has most of the power and options. If his hand missed the flop, he might concede, and you'll only win the money that was in the pot to start. If he hit the flop too he can raise, and now where are you? Do you call a re-raise? The problem will become even more troublesome on the turn. You bet the flop, but your opponent didn't go away. Assuming the turn card doesn't help you, where do you go? Do you bet again, hoping to scare your opponent off? Do you show weakness by checking? To win the hand playing out of position is just far harder than most people realise.

Worse still, when you do win, you usually win much less than you could have won if you had been the final player to act, rather than the first.

Because of the position problem, most players defend their blinds far too often. They see that they already have some money invested, and are getting a 'discount' on their call, but fail to think the hand all the way through. They may be getting a discount, but they are getting a discount on damaged goods. Efforts to show that you can't be 'pushed around' in the blind can be very costly. Most players would win much more (or lose much less) if they defended their blinds less.

Because good poker advice is rarely black and white, you shouldn't turn into an easy target every time you hold the blind. If you don't defend at least occasionally, you can be certain that you will be attacked every time, and that will cost you more money. The occasional call, or better still the occasional re-raise, will alert the late position players that your blind is not free for the taking.

Picking your spots
Given that you must defend sometimes, what sort of hands should you defend with? I wish I could give you a simple guideline like, 'You should defend your blind 31% of the time,' but no such rule exists, because how much defending you need to do is a factor of how much attacking the other players choose to do.

Some defendable hands are obvious, however. If you get dealt a big pair or A-K or A-Q suited, your hand practically plays itself. If you won't re-raise with those hands, you're too timid to play winning poker.

Unfortunately, you won't be dealt these strong hands as often as you need to defend your blind, so you'll need to select some other hands to defend with. Choosing the right hands is very important, and many players instinctively make the wrong choice.

Even though A-4 is a better heads-up hand than J-10, you're much better off defending with the J-10. Why? On many occasions when a late position player attacks, if he has an Ace, it's a big Ace. That means that if you get the 'apparently' good flop of A-9-5, you might wind up losing a fortune to someone who was raising with A-K. Even though Aces and Kings look like excellent 'defending' cards, unless you have a strong kicker, you run too much risk of finding yourself in a 'dominated hand' position.

A hand like J-10 is less likely to contain the same key cards as your attacker's. If an Ace hits the flop, you can get away from your hand. If the flop comes 10-4-2, the player who raised you with A-Q has nothing - and it is far more likely that a late position raise will come from someone holding two big cards than from someone holding a big pair like K-K.

As a result, 'unpredictable' but potentially useful hands like J-10 or even 5-6 are probably better defending hands than something like A-2 or K-3. If you play A-2 and an Ace flops, you'll only get action when your hand is in big trouble. If you play something 'tricky' like 7-8, you might wind up crushing someone who raised from late position with A-K when the flop comes A-7-8. You can also win pots from A-K raisers who are afraid to slow down when the flop comes 8-3-2. You'll pay dearly if the raiser held K-K, but again remember that late position raises are more likely to come from players holding two big cards than from a big pair. Naturally, if the raiser held K-K and the flop comes 8-8-3, your call with 7-8 puts you in position to win a fortune from players who don't expect you to be holding an eight.

How many are queuing up to hit you?
The next important point to consider when defending your blind is in a sense a variation on the pot odds question: how many people have attacked? If in a limit game a mid-position player raises to £60, and three players flat call that raise, the first thing you should do is realize you've found a good game, because flat-calling two bets is usually a weak play. If your hand is strong enough to call two bets, it is probably strong enough to take the initiative to make it three bets.

Let's leave the juicy game issue aside, though, and realise that the multi-player situation changes your pot odds considerably. With four players in for £60 and a folded £15 small blind, the pot contains £285 when you ponder putting in the extra £30. These pot odds are so wonderful that you can call with almost any kind of reasonable hand; I'd even call with something as woeful as 3-2 (but not 7-2; against multi-player fields, you want hands that can make straights or flushes).

Most of the time, your weak hand will be worthless on the flop, but when you do hit it, the rich pot tends to get richer: players will stay in with you, chasing for the size of the pot, and instead of £285, you'll probably win £500 or £600 in a limit game. In a pot-limit or no-limit game, your speculative holding can easily bust someone who forgets that Holdem is not a two-card game, but a seven-card game.