Defending your BB in high blind and ante structure

I've been tossing around this idea/theory that I have, and want some input from you guys if it would be a good theory to test out, and if so, what parameters to put on it.

Basically it goes like this....I don't defend my BB very often unless I have a real hand...which is not really defending....it's just playing your good hand pretty much straightforwardly...

anyways it has occurred to me that since people tend to raise raise small, when the blinds and antes are big (usually between 2.0x and 2.5x) then with blinds and antes being so valuable, I may be making mistakes by folding my BB too often.

But I don't want to develop a leak or start bleeding chips out of my BB during a critical time of the tourney either....

So here is my idea in a nutshell....most of the time people are raising with 2 high unpaired cards.....yes sometimes they are raising with pairs but the 2 high card combos far outweigh the pair combos...so on a sheer statistical basis, with no other read it is more likely that the person raising your BB just has 2 big cards...(let's define this as any 2 cards T or higher from early and mid position and any 2 cards 9 or higher from late position).

If we just flat call the raise (guaranteed to see a flop since we have last action) then we can use our post flop skills to win a lot of heads up pots when our opponents miss.

If the flop comes raggedy and small, we lead out whether or not we hit anything.
if the flop comes with 1 big and 2 small cards we consider leading out based on board texture and player read
if the flop comes with 2 or 3 big cards we probably just check fold
if we hit the flop but have kicker problems we can pot control and bluff catch
if we smash the flop with our "big blind special" we can slow play or fast play depending on our opponent and board texture....

as you can see, the options for how to proceed on the flop are numerous and cannot all be listed here.

In the case of our opponent raising small with 2 big unpaired cards, we probably have pot odds to call with any 2 cards...but as we know it's not all about pot odds in a tourney due to ICM and tourney odds...so defending with A2C is gonna be a leak. But we can probably defend a lot wider than I have been.

Let's take an example of Blinds are 1,000/2,000/300 9 handed so the starting pot is 5,700 and the average stack is 55,000 and we have 57,000 in the BB so our M= exactly 10. It folds to the Hijack who has been engaged in a moderate amount of late position blind stealing, he has about 70k and has been Cbetting the flop nearly 100% of the time. Hijack raises to 4,800 Everyone else folds and you look down at T6o. What to do? Old me would have insta mucked this hand. But with my new theory....hmmmm....pot contains 10,500 and it costs us just 2,800 more to call giving us 3.75:1 pot odds.

What do you think? What is the worst hand we should defend with here?

ideas? critiques? other angles I may not have considered?

the problem is that you have to know all the possibles moved you will make. so are you expecting to get a top pair with T6o? because that would rarely happen and won't be profitable. If you, on the other hand, are looking foward to hit any ten or six, it will then be profitable. my question is, what are you looking for by playing T6o??

surely our aim when playing from the bb with shallow stacks late game oop is NOT to see flops, unless we're trapping with a monster or on a stop & go? Calling a raise in the bb is almost always -ev. Depends on stack depth & the raiser of course, but the vast majority of the time when playing from the bb deep, i'm either raising or folding, why would we want to see a flop oop?

matiusaa said:

the problem is that you have to know all the possibles moved you will make. so are you expecting to get a top pair with T6o? because that would rarely happen and won't be profitable. If you, on the other hand, are looking foward to hit any ten or six, it will then be profitable. my question is, what are you looking for by playing T6o??

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Right, to attempt this you would have to know exactly what kind of flop you are going to bet at, what you're going to check/fold and what you are going to check/call with. It wouldn't be a good strategy for anybody inexperienced with post flop play.

I think if you are only going to make a play for the pot when you flop top pair....then you are not ready to try this kind of strategy.

Concern #1 is about putting your opponent on a range, and reading whether or not the flop hit THEM... Concern #2 is whether or not the flop hit me, and how hard

Since your opponent will miss the flop roughly 2/3 of the time, and we will hit the flop some of the time I think it could be profitable against the right type of opponent.

It's just a theory...haven't really had a chance to test it much yet.

Red_Devil said:

surely our aim when playing from the bb with shallow stacks late game oop is NOT to see flops, unless we're trapping with a monster or on a stop & go? Calling a raise in the bb is almost always -ev. Depends on stack depth & the raiser of course, but the vast majority of the time when playing from the bb deep, i'm either raising or folding, why would we want to see a flop oop?

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I agree that what you have described is kind of "standard" poker tourney advice. I have been following that general "ABC" formula for years now, and I think it is a solid foundation to start on.

I am wondering if, as our game advances, we can profitably add in some advanced plays that DO use some of our post flop skills....

I frequently find myself in this situations where even the average stack is somewhat short, people are min raising, and I'm folding my blinds to probably pure steals. My stack size is too awkward to re-steal all in with a marginal hand, and I'm not desperate yet....in these situations when somebody min raises your blinds, your choices are basically fold or re-raise. In the past have been folding....a lot... to min raises when I'm getting like 4:1 pot odds. I want to branch out a little, but I don't want to do so maniacally or randomly....I want to have a plan and rationale for all bets and calls that I make....

bump.

any other thoughts on this?

I've been applying it selectively with OK results. Folding pure trash and sometimes folding marginal hands and sometimes defending with marginal hands and donk betting on raggedy flops.

I'd say it is a break even play for me so far....but one thing it seems to do is get people to back off stealing my blinds. I'm getting more walks and more "check my option" in the BB situations....which I guess is a positive thing.

In general, since I'm going to be OOP, I'm somewhat more likely to defend when the opener is on the passive side. And I'll lead the flop quite often since a fair range of flops hit the range he's likely to put me on.