No cards for long stints

How do you deal with when the random deal make you completely card dead and you see half
you stack blinding down to nothing?

nobody knows you're getting dealt bad hands but you.

raise more in late position. 3bet bluff. call wider in the big blind. limp more in the small blind if you can get away with it. steal blinds more. re-steal more.

so many things you can do.

Everyone goes through periods of being card dead. Often it is was separates the winning players from the losing players.

The key is to pick spots. Late position with no raisers in front. Ideally, you don't want any limpers either, but raising against one limper, especially if they are loose is OK. Target the blinds by stealing from the BTN and CO more often.

3-bet more. Target those that are playing lots of hands and try to push them off with hands that have any sort of reasonable equity (suited Aces, Kings, Queens, suited two gappers) when you have position.

The worst thing you can do is to sit and wait for a monster only to find when you do have AA that you have no fold equity, get four callers to your shove and lose to J8.

The situation is unpleasant of course, here you will have to put everything on a more or less decent hand with the hope of doubling the stack, and often limp mediocre hands trying to catch a hand on the flop. Use every opportunity to steal the blinds, be overly aggressive and hope for luck.

The thing you don't want to do is start playing garbage hands. The best thing you can do is be patient and worse case scenario you get blinded down into push fold stack depth and then play accordingly from there. Your opening range probably has hands you always open, marginal hands that are still good that you open at times, and then hands you will never open. Look at the marginal hands that you sometimes open (maybe hands like suited connectors) and you can open these with the same frequency as you do the strong hands and also deviate a little with these by opening their related hands. Meaning if 87 suited is a decision opening hand for you then you can include 87 off, 76 and 65 suited hands as well to be opened. I wouldn't deviate too far from your normal opening range but you can add some of the edge hands to your opening range that you would not normally open. As others have said you can also look for steal spots because when you steal the plan is to never show your cards anyway so they don't necessarily have to be strong.

Only thing I do in situation like yours is to wait and be patient. If you try to steal, someone will reraise and you will be in worst situation, so patience is the key of survival, cards will come

This is a game and now one player is lucky, in the next hand, luck will be on your side. Just forget about this situation and continue your game.

Well you fold most of the time, but in certain spots (which are mostly already mentioned) you enter to try to pick up the blinds. You can not go completely inactive.

If you seek to play the best you can in any situation being card dead isn't such a big deal. If you put in the volume luck will eventually even out. Just stick to your open ranges and play your best.
If you find that you have a hard time playing with a shallow stack, study push fold situations more. It's much less frustrating to bust if you know that you made an ICM +EV shove.

I don't have a specific strategy for dealing with this situation. each time, depending on the quantity and quality of the opponent, I make a different decision. I think that many people do this.

Card Dead

This happens to most of us I assume being "card dead" at a table. For me its part of the game of poker and when this happens to me I set a limit of what I am willing to lose at a table and if I continue with bad cards I'll move on to another table.

GL ALL !

play more tables - variance will smooth the wait!

moshie said:

How do you deal with when the random deal make you completely card dead and you see half
you stack blinding down to nothing?

Click to expand...

this sometimes happens and it’s normal. You can give out garbage hands 40 and 60 times in a row and this will be the norm. but of course it will not always be. of course, at that rate, the stack decreases and you have to wait at least the middle hand for a push and a possible doubling. the main thing is not to give in to emotions and choose the right range of the draw

Not much you can do sometimes, it's often you'll run extremely card dead in tournaments and don't get any spots due to playing very few hands, it's a really small sample size. Those are the times you just have to rip it when you get a chance and pray to get through or double up instead of blinding out. If all fails you just Rinse and Repeat, onto the next tournament.

One of the main reasons that someone very quickly becomes a professional and successful poker player, and someone lingers for a long time in the amateur league, is the ability to overcome long lines of bad luck. If someone thinks that he is the smartest, plays poker best of all, and his black streak of bad luck does not touch, he will not only be deeply mistaken, but will fly by all his money faster than others. Bad luck catches up with even the most experienced and knowledgeable players, because this is the nature of poker. Therefore, it is better not to deny the problem, but to be prepared for it.

It helps if you are playing more than one table.

If on a single table, take the opportunity to learn the players at this table. You will see which of them always continuation bet, which open with marginal hands, even how much they bet on bluffs. Keep a small notebook and use it. Know that when the cards come, even if it is in a future tournament, you can better play these villains.