If youre in the small blind and its folded to you, do you always call?

As the small blind your getting 3:1 pot odds, which is more than good enough pot odds to call unless you have two undercards and the big blind has a pair higher than both your cards, in which case you would needed better than 4.9:1 pot odds. But the big blind is just one random hand so that's unlikely. However, you are out of position for the whole hand. Will you call with hands like 10 8, 7 5, jack 4 in the small blind or just fold and give the BB the walk?

No, that's actually a leak in many people's games. Rags OOP = -EV

The main reason you wouldn't IMO is if they may raise. Playing against an extremely passive opponent who practically never raises PF calling is probably correct if you can know when you're good. The problem is you are out of position and you have no idea if your hand is good. Say you have 37 and the flop comes 39Q. There are a lot of scenarios you are good here, but you don't know if they have 45 or Q9. If enough people limp (say 4 for this example), I'm getting 11 to 1 odds and there's no way I fold.

IMO, with rag hands, this is also very marginal (reverse implied odds).

Would you limp with Q3o getting 11:1?
What would you do when you flopped QQ2? What about QT3? How do you know you're not spewing chips to a higher Q, a set, or anything else for that matter?

I raise with the top 50% of my hands and fold the bottom 50%. Easy. I hate messing around post-flop OOP.

it depends on how high the blinds are (15/30 vs 120/240) and in what type of game I am in (tournament vs. cash)
tournaments:
low blinds i always give walks with crap hands, no reason to play for so little chips
when the blinds get higher i tend to fold the really shitty hands, and trying to give the BB a message that I am giving him walks, then i can raise PF or do the sneaky steal (The Sneaky Steal) when I need that extra big blind

cash:
i give walks every time unless really tight player in my BB or i have a drawing type hand or better, dont really like to mix it up in the blinds though, no real point because there is no need to build a stack because the blinds do not increase.

fold > call

any opinions about raising crud hands?

No, simply because we'll be OOP for the remainder of the hand. Completing with 93s just because it's cheap is a losing play because, really, there's no incencitive to do it, unless you play in an ante game (or three blinds game) where there's enough money in the pot to justify playing looser to steal it after the flop. The only time I'll limp is with a good hand and I've been raising a lot when it was folded to me in the SB, to mix it up a bit, or if I know BB will reraise.

But I fold a lot of SB.

If one other players limps in, then the call becomes a 5-1 thing, and almost worth playing ATC. If 2 players limp it's a no brainer. 7-1 is good.

Obviously, if you know the BB is insane, and will raise, you ignore those odds.

I play my small blind on its merits - don't autocall or autofold

If it's folded to you in the sb, then it becomes just like a HU betweeb you and the BB, and should be treated as such. Depending on chip stacks, blind size, all the usual factors, I'll limp with just about ATC, and rause with a lot of hands. Eg, suited connectors, any hand Q-7,J-8 or so, or better, I'll make a standard raise. Statistically, you're a faviorite over a random hand at least 50^ of the time. Exceptions exisr; say the BB is a flat out maniac for example. Against a TAG or better yer, TP player, a 2.5 to 3x raise will steal a lot of hands in this scenario.

If it is humanly possible, I'd call.
cheers

example...93 vs Ax is 2:1 dog...why not limp? BB raises fold

In heads up play? Absolutely.

A SB-BB situation at a full table has one important difference though: position

When you're playing heads up, you can limp (or even raise) from the small blind because you know you'll have position for the rest of the hand. In the small blind at a full table, however, you're playing a weaker than normal hand out of position. I don't think the subsidy of half a bet outweighs the positional disadvantage you'll be at for the entire hand if you've got a marginal holding.

NL holdem is a game of implied odds. We should not make pre-flop decisions based solely on pot odds unless we are going all-in.

If we complete the SB with garbage hands, we have to flop 2 pairs or better to be able to continue post-flop with any confidence.

The odds to flop 2 pairs is 2.0%
The odds to flop trips is 1.3%
The odds to flop full house is 0.1%

This gives us combined odds of 3.4% for a good flop.

However, we will sometimes lose with 2 pairs when the board counterfits us or when there are multiple players and one makes better 2 pairs by the river. We will also sometimes lose with trips to str8s or flushes. So we have to discount the 3.4%.

If we lose say 0.45% of the time, then 0.45% of our wins will pay for that and we are left with an estimated chance to win of 2.5% which is 40 to 1 odds.

We also have to account for the fact that the BB will sometimes raise after we complete and we will have to fold. Say that this happens 20% of the time. This increases our effective cost to

EffCost = 0.5BB * 100/(100-%raised) = 0.625 BB

Since our odds to win are 40 to 1, we need to make a minimum average profit of

RequiredAvgProfit = odds*cost = 25 BB

From the calculations above, we can make the following observations:

Cash Games:

• When heads up, this would require betting on all 3 future rounds. Since we are OOP, we don't have the luxury of our opponent leading into us. It is very unlikely that everytime we hit, our single opponent will call us down all the way to the river.

• With multiple opponents, it is more likely to have an average win of 25 BB because the initial pot is larger and because it is more likely that someone flopped something good.

Tournaments:

• When blinds are small and stacks large, we can apply the same critiria as for cash games

• When blinds are medium, the average stack is in the 20-30BB area. So it is very unrealistic that everytime we hit the flop we will stack someone.

• When blinds are big, the situation is ever worse since many players will have stacks less than our minimum average win requirement of 25BB. In addition, completing the small blind represents a larger % of our stack. To top it all off, when stacks are shorter, it is more likely that the BB will re-raise us, which further reduces our odds.

In conclusion, we can complete the small blind in cash games or early in a tournament if there are multiple limpers.

I am getting out of the habit of calling from the small blind. If I don't have a good starting hand and can't raise I will fold. I have been getting raised when I limp a good bit lately. I say save your chips and use them on the next hand you play.
Every chip counts when you can double up.

I foldo crap like Q3 not because it might miss, but because it may HIT!

I usually do call unless its getting too costly blindwise,its hands sometimes you wouldnt call and you never know they may just hit course if bb decides to raise and I dont have great cards I have wasted those chips but better to fold than waste more.

Good point, even worse though is that if this flop comes and another player doesn't have us beat they'll very likely just fold on the flop. Maybe we get lucky and someone with AA decides we can't have a Q and bets hard. Basically WHEN WE HIT (assuming the other time we don't bluff and thus lose our blinds only and never win anything) we win small pots and lose big ones, and we can't make many reads because they just limped preflop. They could be slowplaying a monster or pretty much have about anything considering the way most people play today.