Why Blinds?

I have not read anything to the contrary, so I will propose this as a possible reason to the question; "Why Blinds, and not ante's, and why were they invented?" I can remember occasionally running into blinds in my youth, back in the 60's. I have no clue how long they have been used.

At a full active social table, especially early, there is so much distraction that for a dealer to try to get the attention of each player in turn to ante up, the situation got too exasperating. Someone came up with the idea to rotate the ante's around the table, with one player ante'ing up 2/3 of all the ante's involved, and the player in front of him ante'ing up the other 1/3.

I'd bet the dealers immediately loved this new idea, and in the days before casino's set the standard, when dealers were traveling salesman, it probably spread fast.

But poker didn't used to use dealers so much. Home games, which tend to be more social early on, would have a rotating dealer scheme, and it would have been much easier for the dealer to tap the guy to his left to ante up, under this new scheme, and watch as he tapped the guy to his left to make the bigger ante.

Why call them blinds?

It is essentially a blind bet. It might been seeing as the small blind makes the min bet, and the bb raises. This has an effect of setting the action into motion.

Laziness being the father of invention, it was laziness which promoted blinds. Guys were to lazy to catch each players attention to make sure the ante's were paid.

If someone has the real, documented story about the development of blinds I would love to read it. Else it has faded into myth, and here was my version.

I'll accept that ,sounds true for sure, I played home games for many years and it's definitely hard to get everyone to ante and keep track of who all did. sometimes we just had the dealer put $5 in ,that way there were no mistakes,everyone had their turn.

well why call walking, walking why call flying, flying?

i'll take your version as fact, wiki it.

I can remember occasionally my youth, back in the 60's.






I can accept this statement, or I can accept the biography you posted a while ago. I cannot accept both.

I take your version as accurate,
when in timeline it happened is the mystery.
I have been around for awhile, and when I was a youngster watching
my Uncles and their friends play Poker..
it was always around the table Antes..No blinds..
One of my Uncles as a Truck Driver, was a Las Vegas regular in the 70's and played lots of Poker. He knew all the variations of Stud and Omaha,
and I never once heard the word 'Blinds'.

~"..If you remeber the 60's--you weren't there.."~
- some Musician (can't remeber which)

Here is all I could find regarding blinds,
No documentation but here is a direction anyhow.

"..In fact, a single blind is the tradition form of the game since the 1800s. The two-blind structure evolved as a blind with a mandatory straddle. Three blinds is also not uncommon (third on the button)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Blind_%28poker%29
LDC 03:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

cannot find much else other than the standard poker info.

I think in Gardena some games had "bet blind/ raise blind structure. I believe it was to get around the state imposed $20 limit on bets.

I also remember watching my father and uncles playing in the late 60's and quite often i heard the term blind.
As I understood it when one of them was having a bit of a run (or felt lucky) they made a blind bet, then as i remember the strategy was to raise on the flop, I suppose to give the illusion that they had hit.
It wasn't used to often but had dramatic effect as i remember from my childhood. (depraved as it was watching all this demonic gambling)
Also It was called Blind because it was a bet made pre hole cards