Big Blind Defence

[RustyRed83]

I believe it is an unforgiving position with many opportunities for mistakes. When facing a raise, under-defending will result in you slowly leaking chips. On the other hand, over-defending will leave you in tough spots post-flop, being out of position is also a big problem, when trying to defend a blind.

What are others thoughts about strategy and experiences playing the big blind?

 

[MrPokerVerse]

I believe it is an unforgiving position with many opportunities for mistakes. When facing a raise, under-defending will result in you slowly leaking chips. On the other hand, over-defending will leave you in tough spots post-flop, being out of position is also a big problem, when trying to defend a blind.

What are others thoughts about strategy and experiences playing the big blind?

Find it easy folding on the blinds. If someone tight raises in late position, might entertain seeing the flop. Like you said post flop it can get tricky.

 

[Amdrius]

I believe it is an unforgiving position with many opportunities for mistakes. When facing a raise, under-defending will result in you slowly leaking chips. On the other hand, over-defending will leave you in tough spots post-flop, being out of position is also a big problem, when trying to defend a blind.

What are others thoughts about strategy and experiences playing the big blind?

Unfortunately, the current situation in poker is such that defending the blinds is already an integral part of the strategy. I remember the moment when they were just starting to talk and write about defense. How easy it used to be to win money)). At that time, no one understood what exactly needed to be done, and because of this, large bankrolls were lost. What I can say is that without it there is no way, but before you implement blinds protection in your game, you need to watch and read a lot of videos and literature, otherwise losses are inevitable.

 

[Skot_Gy]

I am interested in this thread also, cause i need to implement this in my game.
I am learning from Cardscat's 30 day course, and i like it

 

[Lena M]

Hi.
I think that in any case, if you do not understand your opponent and can not predict his actions, you should not play with junk. This is the best protection.

 

[NightStalker]

Depends on the hand you have and on the raise you're facing.

 

[dreamer13]

The shorter your stack,the wider your defensive range should be,defend a lot of offsuit hands against raises from late position,but play tight against raises from late position,but play tight against raises from early position and defend wider against players with low c-bets in position is 60-70%,the range of defense needs to be expanded,because this player allows us to watch the turn more often and realize equity better.

 

[dallam]

People defend BB position because noone is going to act behind them pre. And it can hide some kind of unpredictable range, low flop definitely can hit them.
Also as they already invested chips in it, easier to just make a call on the min-bets or low bets and broke them on the upcoming streets.

One thing you really have to assign to your BB game is that only SB will gonna be in worse position coming to the streets. So if you not hit it on flop, or the flop has some texture which can support already villain(s), its a sign to let this defended position go in time. Otherwise you can make your calls, check-raises if you were favoured.

 

[tony2521]

There are occasions that by defending the blinds the flop involves us and costs us the tournament

 

[waizingpoker]

Randomize and pick spot

I would take in consederation the table image og whois raising, the ratio of raise vs. Stack and ofcorse trying to randomize my Calls, raises and folds.

 

[hilary antonik filho]

It will depend on my cards, my position, I already know my opponents, hardly in this case, I allinn

 

[Zvezda kz]

If there is a card for this draw, then I defend. The higher the limit, the better you should understand many nuances, including the protection of the big blind.

 

[NWPatriot]

I really think that BB defense is overrated. What we need to do is play good poker all the time. Whether we defend or not depends on all the same criteria that we use for whether we call a raise or open the pot.

If we fold every time we are in the BB, our bb/100 would be -110bb/100 (-100 for the BB and -10 for the antes). The SB would be -60bb/100 and all the other seats would be -10bb/100. When we defend a hand by calling but then fold on the flop to pressure, then we will be -310bb/100's in the BB. The point is that defending the blind needs to be considered in the context of the strategy for the hand, not just calling the pre-flop bet. Defending costs more chips than folding and if we have a poor hand, let it go.

The BB is the worst seat in poker to start with. We have to invest without knowing our cards AND we will be OOP for the rest of the hand against 90% of the players. Calling a pre-flop bet with a worse hand than we would have called if we were in MP or the CO or something, has us playing poker at a disadvantage every time. Why would we do this? They will tell us that we have great pot odds due to our calling discount. This is true, but the math doesn't really support playing terribly just because we have a discount.

I know some of this is contrary to what the poker community is trying to tell us. In 140,000 hands, my bb/100 form the BB is -20bb/100. This is better than any of the players I am playing against. It is very difficult to have a +bb/100 from this seat. We can lose 1bb when we fold or lose 3bb when we call and then fold (3x more). So minimizing our losses in this seat is the best we can do and part of this strategy is to not invest 3x more in our bad hands.

Play our solid ranges and play good poker. If the BTN or CO seem to be abusing us, then we can easily have a range advantage on our calls against them and we will do well. Just play good poker, always.

Good luck and God Bless.

 

[pavel1111111]

Yes, it can be said, but there are some cases in which you can defend your big blind with almost any 2 cards because no matter what cards your opponent has you can have an accuracy of up to 48%, but this is not a rule ... you have to followed and studied a bit and the game of the opponents , some, most of them, try to steal your blinds

 

[Lipki3]

On a min-raise, I defend almost all cards. If the raise size is larger, for example 3-3.5BB, then I defend hands with an ace, K9+, connectors.

 

[efranto2286]

Hello good post I think it depends on my position the knowledge you have about the opponents the amount of chips the moment of the tournament... there are many variables to defend the big blinds

 

[JhonnyThe357]

Defense at BB

In cash games, I defend with almost all my cards, pre-flop, depending of course on the value of previous bets.
In tournaments, it will depend a lot on the stage you are in, the opponents, among many other factors. It's hard to pin down exactly which cards to play in any position. hehehehe😅
That's why I keep studying a lot.

 

[JhonnyThe357]

Complement

hehehehe😅 That's why I keep studying a lot.[/QUOTE]

In fact, in BB is the worst place in poker to start
😅

 

[pocketace222]

It's only a problem if your always calling down with a single pair or draw to the end, idea is to hit the flop even marginally then be more aggressive in your cheek raise giving up when you conclude your not ahead. Huge payoffs available here and the chance you get stacked if your not smart about it

 

[Roller]

The thing everyone must consider is there own strengths, just because something is the best or mathematically or GTO doesn't make it best for you or your game. If you play very well postflop then defend wider and if you could improve postflop perhaps defend tighter until you improve that portion of your game.

 

[77ecos]

You have to defend to avoid leaking chips that seems insignificant but in the end it is enough, just as you have to know how to defend also fold, as a consequence defending blinds you will realize that your rivals will not raise often or fold and that is where you are trapped to continue learning more things

 

[Ketienne]

If I feel that someone in late position is raising me to steal my chips, I defend the big blind with a solid hand.
It also depends on how many chips I have and whether I classify my opponent as loose or tight. If someone is playing extremely tight and has made no effort to steal the blinds before from other players, I'll give up the big blind. It's hard to give a general answer here.

 

[gustavofuentes2]

I believe that the big blind is the best position to be in. The reason being you know what players are willing to raise and how much before you, this makes your decision as to whether to stay or not much easier. Other plyers don't know what you are holding so it's much easier to bluff on a good hand. You don't have to get into a reraising battle between players that will cost many chips regardless of what you have. Remember the norm is that if you have a pocket pair so does someone else. So even if you have pocket aces you can either limp in or fold or just be the aggressor and hope no one hits their pocket pair. you don't have.

 

[0546474]

Of course, you are absolutely right that you need to defend the big blind, but some players make a lot of mistakes in this place defending garbage or frankly weak hands and end up losing everything !!!

 

[rastapapolos]

I think that we have to consider the aggressor seat, if he is opening from early position and it folded to us in the bb we have to have something to defend with especially if he is a tight player, now vs a loose player we could play some marginal hands like the suited one gappers or high suited cards.
But if the aggressor is in late position (CO, BU) we should 3-bet with our defending range one third of the time to pick the pot right away and mixing things up in case we have a premium hand. In both cases, one must be a great post-flop player and careful to villain play. I played a guy who raised every hand from the BU while I was in the BB, 1/3 of the time I raised him with air and he folded.
There is also the fact that some flop textures will favorite the blinds defender and by showing some aggression villain will give us credits and fold the best hand.