protecting your blind

I have heard it said that it is important to protect your blinds. I'm not sure to what extent I agree with that.

I was playing in a hold-em tournament in Vegas at the Sahara. I noticed this one player at the table, every time he was in the big blind, when faced with a raise he would reraise to double the amount of the initial raise. After observing this several times and even folding to him twice I had enough of him constantly doing that.

I had JJ and put in a bet, sure enough he reraised to twice the amount of my raise. I reraised again to put him all-in and sure enough he called. He made the comment that "noone steals my blinds". He called with a 6,4 offsuite and lost the pot and was eliminated from the tounament.

I never really understood the importance of protecting your blinds. I never looked at things that way and always just played the cards that were dealt to me. If the cards were favorable I would act on them and if they were weak I would fold whether I was in the blinds or not.

Can anyone tell me the importance of protecting your blinds?

Aggressive players in late position or in the small blind will often raise without a big hand. It`s a commonplace technique in MTTs. Therefore, it is correct to play back at them with any reasonably playable hand.

Sometimes, you may be able to get away with re-stealing when you have no hand yourself. However, to try this regularly (like the player you describe) is easily exploitable and he paid the price.

If you wanted to be a jerk, you could have replied back to him, "Maybe not.. but I just stole your entire chip stack."

generally speaking, to me,i will give up the big blind,if somebody which i am not familiar to to steal my big blind,i think it is safer to do that.