Playing out of the blinds

Hey guys.

I try to figure out a few things about my game lately. I have more than 25.000 hands in the DB, so i can conclude a few things. I d like your thoughts about the blind play. First of all, I play shorthanded. I m pretty sure ( if i m wrong freely correct me ) that it is almost impossible to be a winning player when playing out of the blinds. So my main question is about minimizing the loss at these positions. What hands do you prefer playing when being at the blinds? What's a good number of loss in BB/100 hands? I m now at .06$ per hand loss. Untill now i didn't have a basic plan of how to play out of the blinds. That's what i try to figure out. If I minimize my starting hands to the best 21.4% ( use pokerstove ) my loss becomes 4 times higher....! So, If my calculations are correct, I do not thing that i play too many hands. Perhaps I play them badly. I d like your insight about this subject.

Thanks

Still not enough info, but...

A mistake I think ppl have playing NL / FL is that in the SB they feel obliged to call the bb with any hand. If you have rubbish fold!!!

Call if you have pot odds - i.e. lots of limpers.

In bb its the same, call a bet if you have the pot odds, fold if you don`t.

If, however, someone seems to be constantly stealing your blind, I give them the old "3 strikes and their out" rule. Again this will depend on chip stacks, etc.

Personally I like to protect my blinds and I widen my range of hands when in the BB even to a raise. Hands like QJ, 78 suited are just some examples. I mean to a raise a hand like QJ can be totally dominated, but that's just my style. It really makes me opponent second guess when I called his preflop raise with 67 and end up hitting a big hand. I just recommend mixing it up a little bit and turn into an aggressive player. It may make your opponents think your a donk when you flip over 67 for trips after a preflop raise making it easier to get paid off on your monster hands. Not sure if you like to see a lot of flops and are confident in your post flop play, but that's my style so hope this helps.

I think pretty much everyone loses money from the blinds: it's a forced bet and you don't have positional advantage postflop. Like Ronaldadio pointed, many people see too many flops in the blinds, calling with all sorts of ridiculous hands in order to "catch". In reality, you'll pretty much only have the flop to improve your hand, and you should catch the nuts or near nuts.

Limit .5/1$
Let's say you have 1 limper in a 6max game (button). You're in the SB and look at 9h8h. You complete, BB check.

Flop comes
6hQh5c

What do you do now? that 98 looked apetizing before the flop, but now it's a mess. Since you'll hit your flush approx. 33% of the time, you need 3 people in to come out on top and always give proper odds in the long run. You check hoping to raise and buy a free card on the turn, BB bets, button folds, you raise, he calls. Turn is Jc. BB doesn't slow down and bets. You pretty much have to fold here since the pot is small and you'll have to pay a BB to draw to your flush and villain range to check in the BB includes small pp, a small ace or even overcards with smallish kickers that have paired (K6,K5, etc.). Also, you don't have very good implied odds since he'll probably only check his marginal holding if the flush hits, so you stand to pay 1BB (and invest more than 1:4) to get maybe 1BB more on the river.

Even in NL, these type of hands on this flop texture can cost a bundle because you only have a gutshot and a draw to a beatable flush. Your hand is an underdog to many and probably should've been folded preflop because there wasn't a lot of people in the pot (to give you monnies if you hit and to insure you get proper odds to call, at least in limit).

The way I try to minimize my loss is to either fold or raise in the small blind and insure I only play hands that warrant raising. I'll limp when there's a ton of people in and I have suited connectors or the like. BB, same thing.

You just have to be selective of the hands, players and spot you play in the blinds.