Playing marginal hands from the blinds

So, in this thread (Long)OK, is this awful variance or terrible play? everyone hammered me about playing too many hands from the blinds.

I like to play stuff like SC's, small pairs, even double face cards esp if a LAG raised (or TAG with SC's)

I get what everyone is saying, but I am wondering if it really is bad at 20NL, because out of 14K hands in my poker tracker, I have :

Amount Won : Without Blind :

BB -43.40 494.60
SB -147.23 120.47

Which means that excluding the amount that I am forced to pay by default being in the blinds, I am actually making profit with my playing style. And amazingly the profit in the BB is biggest than in any position.

Am I crazy, or seeing/thinking something wrong in here? I don't want to contradict much better players than I, but those are the numbers I see....

P.S. : BTW, my fold to steal is : 81.53% in SB, 69.75% in BB, and only 58% fold BB to steal HU (tho that stat is only for 212 hands)

I looked at this thread yesterday and earlier today and didn't know how to respond. I was hoping someone else would, but I hate to leave a thread unanswered...

212 hands is a relatively small sample, but if you are making money at it, then any advice I give you can be dismissed.

Playing suited connectors OOP and making a profit pretty much breaks all the rules and theory of poker with 100bb NL poker. However there are some conditions we can put on this that might make this fesible.

-Weak opponents, that let us dictate the size of the pot
-short effective stacks
-short term luck

These three things can really mitigate position, and if I wan't tired I could probably think of a few more things. However while you are making money in the blinds, I would seriously consider making it a habit now of taking the others people's advice because some day when you move up I can gurantee taht you will bleed out money from these positions like the rest of us.

As they say though, "Ball til you fall". GL!

C9's guide to playing marginal hands from the blinds:

Don't play marginal hands when you're out of position.

K, now go out and improve your win rate by 100bb/100.

K, thanks for the quote, next time maybe you'll want to add some thoughts of your own (if possible) and answer the specific subject instead of being ironic...

Funny how I give people legit advice and they think I'm messing with them.

I'm seeing similar stats at 2NL and 5NL however i cannot comment on 20NL as I imagine there is alot more raising and 3 betting preflop.

I am probably playing too many hands in the blinds mainly because of limpers at the micros. You might have 3-5 limpers and you are often priced in at the SB to see a flop. You can also be priced in alot from the BB when someone makes a raise and a few fish call him.

Lol, C9, i've seen you post in 2 of this guys threads with serious advice only to recieve some sarcastic bulshit, give up IMO, he has an answer for everything obviously.

Dude, you need to listen to people who are clearly much better than you rather than this silly attititude. Btw i'm not saying i'm better than you, but C9 most definately is.

Oh and playing marginal hands oop sucks. BB to a SB open is different though, now you have position.
It's very difficult to get value when you hit, and when you flop something marginal -marginal starting hands tend to make marginal hands post flop- you never quite sure where you are, plus you're oop and you're gonna be given difficult decisions to make.

At 20nl, it's not necesarry so you should really stop doing it.

Why are you trying to advocate playing OOP when it has been proven over and over and over again that it is unprofitable over the long run?

Your always going to lose if you keep playing from the blinds. The only way i see any decent +EV from playing from the blinds is by being the aggressor. Fold all marginal hands simply because you will lose $$. example- You have j10 and a mp lag player raises 3x the bb. Firstly your out of position against an aggressive player who will almost always bet the flop or the turn. j10 is a hand that is crippled against AJ KJ QJ JJ 1010 QQ KK AA. Even if your opponent has a hand like AK your still an underdog and out of position. Only good situation is if your opponent has 78s or something like that but even then those sc are very playable on the flop and your opponent will be in position and have the betting lead. If you re-raise your opponent might fold, or if he does call and you can cbet the flop and your opponent could fold to that and j10 isn't the worst hand to play. If that happened to me and i had j10 i would probably fold. If you do re-raise make sure your opponent knows the fold button.

mariginal hands out of positions will get you in trouble over the long run, decent starting hands I would prefer to raise from the blinds and try to steal. I think once you move up in stakes playing too many hands from the blinds you would get eaten up.

This guy is probably better then you. that's gotta be the longest guide i've seen and i'm liking it

Seems like everyone has hit the nail on the head. If you play marginal hands OOP a lot, you will lose in the long run. There is always a time and a place for everything in poker (even playing a few hands OOP), but if you consistently and regularly play bad/marginal hands OOP you will loose.

I don't play them all that much, if you look at my fold to steal 69% from the BB which is pretty normal, a bit on the low side but within the acceptable range.

I do play them sometimes, and I know I'm not supposed to and why (as you guys explained) the point of this thread was to ask about my stats, as they seem out of whack in the blinds over 14K hands, it's the position I've won the most (if you disconsider the blinds themselves) so I was trying to find an explanation for that.

So, that was what I wanted to find out really, not why you shouldn't play them. Didn't mean to offend anyone but that post was besides the subject...

You're going to make a lot of money from the blinds (without blind) purely because you're going to see flops for nothing or have at least have a free .5-1bb per player in the pot when you do play a hand.

As for what your stats should be, put it this way, folding non-premiums is never going to be a big mistake. Folding marginal hands is almost never going to be a mistake at all (when in the blinds, chant the mantra "reverse implied odds are bad, reverse implied odds are bad" and profit).

I personally completely suck at a lot of things in poker and spew chips all over the place (most of us do, but that's besides the point) but the main thing that makes me profitable anyway is that I am more focussed than anyone else at the table on exploiting the blinds. When I'm in LP, it's a gold mine. When I'm in the blinds I'm aware that I'm completely screwed and am completely at the mercy of BTN/CO/anyone else who raises and I run away like a scared little girl. However that I'm minimising my losses most of the time and playing premiums when I do play makes me a lot of money from those positions, also, you'll find that even at 20 or 25nl people suck at blind stealing and either give you a walk too often or are really vulnerable to light 3bets which again adds to your profits.
In short, play from the blinds should be profitable; if villains aren't complete idiots then maybe you should be in the red, but your without blind stat should ALWAYS be positive.
Never play marginal hands OOP unless you're bluffing (almost always only against someone who's stealing wide, or who views you as a nit). When OOP you're at the mercy of the guy in position, when in position then you can start playing your marginal hands, hell, play your junk hand IP before you play a SCer OOP.

/rant

Correct me if I am wrong but I think a better way to look at how much you are winning/losing from the blinds would be to look at your positional stats, the add the filter VPIP=True. This will give you all the hands that you have put money into the pot on top of your blinds and may be better then looking at your total amount without blinds.

..

I am not trying to advocate that, I'm just trying to understand my stats from the blinds, that's all

Yes, good points. I probably do play them too much against aggros.
What about a nit player that plays fit or fold? They more easily fold to a bluff than lag players, do you think your J10/similar might be a good hand in that situation?

Thanks for the rant it was useful. I was dumb enough not to think about the free flops I'm seeing as a big part of the profit. Now that I think of it, I have won a few large pots in unraised pots pre-flop, people are willing to get their chips in in unraised pots sometimes where I play it seems. I find they do that more than they used to a few years ago...

They are still profitable for me though when I VPIP in them as well tho.

Thanks, hadn't thought of that. I am pretty new to tracking software and it's stats so any idea helps.

Still profitable, albeit alot less with VPIP in them but 7 buy-ins over 17K hands is still good I think

So can you see that this profit is not coming from your fold to steal of 69% and that figure is at 69% because you are calling with too many marginal hands. Your own observations in your DB show this to be a losing situation.

Overall, one should expect to lose money in the blinds because you are forced to put money in the pot regardless of the quality of your cards. Since there are more hand combos that are negative ev, especially out of position, that losing money in the blinds in the long run is just mathematical fact.

If the button is not your most profitable position, you are doing something seriously wrong.

Yep of course, that's why I've made this thread, because I didn't understand my own results. Now I do better...

It is of course, strangely enough just a buy-in more than MP though.

I just thought my figures were abnormally high AFTER you take out the cost of the blinds.