The big blind must place a bet without even looking at his cards, another disadvantage of this position is that you will be playing against other players without position. This is often a thankless position in which you can make mistakes. One example of this is opponents' raises (open).
- If you defend your blinds too infrequently, your chips will slowly melt away, and your opponents will notice this weakness and open more often, making it easy to steal your bet.
- If you defend the blind too often, you'll get caught in a post-flop game with weak cards and still be playing out of position.
So, obviously this is a problematic place to play, so I'll share six tips (3 for tournament players and 3 for cash players) to help you increase your winnings.
But before that, let's take a look at one example for both poker formats, which will highlight the differences between playing big blind in tournaments and cashes.
BB vs. BTN opening (tournament example)
9 players, stakes 100/200/20
BTN has 13000 (65BB)
BB has 7000 (35BB)
Hero is in BB position and has Xx Xx
BTN opens 420, SB folds. The hero...
Q: With which cards should the hero defend the bet?
We should start by defining the BTN opening range:
Red - raise
Pink - raise/fold
Blue - fold
Before we list the cards that BB should defend with, let's note a few cators that are tournament specific - ducks + small opening size = better price to defend.
Ducks and moderately small opening sizes mean that we can defend big blinds at low cost. A 9-player table of ducks produces almost 1BB, combine that with the relatively small opening sizes (2x - 2.5x) and you have a pretty clear picture of why we need to defend the blinds quite widely.
In the example above, we need to put 220 in the pot to win 900, which means we need to have about 19.6 % of equity against the opponent's opening range. The BTN opens about 68% for all hands, which is saying a lot.
- Varying the number of available chips
Due to the fact that tournaments have a fixed chip count, the opening diagonal is constantly changing, unlike cashes. Normally, players who have a lot of chips open much wider than those who have few. Thus, those with larger chip stacks can exert pressure.
On the other hand, players with low chips can profitably 3bet players with high RFI (raise first in).
- Net equity before realisable equity
When a hand has some, say, 30% of pure equity, it doesn't mean that you will win the pot 30% times. This is because some hands play worse post-flop and therefore realise less equity.
A single suit and/or two cards in a row are the best way to realise equity. Some hands may realise more equity than they have, such as Jh Th against an over-width opponent in some situations or Ah As in all situations.
Let's take into account what has already been discussed and construct a range for defending the big buy before opening the aforementioned BTN.
Red - 3bet'inam
Green - call'inam
Lots of green! At first glance it might even seem like a lot, but let's look at the numbers, even with the worst possible hand against the 68% BU opening range:
Even say 32o only realises two thirds of its equity, which is more than the 19.6% you need to make the call profitable. Don't get me wrong, this is a marginal situation, which you don't have to accept as the norm, but by folding you are sacrificing a small part of your EV to your opponent.
If you feel uncomfortable playing post-flop with these cards, you can fold. However, this setup shows how widely you can defend big blinds against small, frequent BTN openers. If good players are able to defend 72o profitably, then you can certainly handle J3s.
BB before BTN opening (cash example)
6 players, bets 1$/2$.
BTN: 200$ (100BB)
Hero (BB): 200$ (100BB)
BTN opens 6$, SB folds, hero...
Let's start with an assessment of the BTN opening range:
Red - raise
Pink - raise/fold
Blue - fold
A reasonable BB defense range against a 3x open is to call 4$ with a possible win of 9$:
It is worth noting two key differences between this situation and the tournament example analysed earlier:
- The absence of ducks and the standard higher opening size (3x) makes it less expensive to defend BB.
The absence of ducks results in almost 1BB less in the bank than in the previous example.
A 3x opening from BB is 0.9BB higher than the tournament example.
For these reasons, the cost of BB remedies is worse.
In this example, we have to call 4$ to win 13$, which means that we need to have about 30.8% equity against the BTN opening range to make our call profitable. This is without a doubt the worst hand in our defense range against BTN.
37% is much more than the 30.8 we need, and 76o against a wide range of BTNs does a good job of realising its equity. If you have the confidence to play post flop, you can defend even wider.
- Reikas
Unlike in tournaments, rake is paid per hand when a player hits the flop, and sometimes pre-flop in some live draws. On platforms where the rake is particularly high, you must be prepared to adjust your play from the BB.
When you play small pots post-flop, you have to narrow your call range due to the reduced pot odds. The rake encourages 3betting because you pay nothing if the hand ends on the flop.
In short: DON'T GIVE AWAY YOUR BIG BLAINDO SO EASILY!
And now some tips for tournament and casho players.
3 tips for a solid BB strategy in tournaments
- Fight for the ducks
Consider that the ducks should influence the range of our BB defence and opening.
Players tend to overlook the importance of ducks because the chips we each put in as a duck seem very small to us, but they make a big difference to our pot odds when all the ducks are stacked.
- Be more aggressive and use 3bet shoves.
When you don't have a lot of chips (less than 20BB), don't be afraid to 3bet shove your opponents who open from late positions.
If you take the right measures and pick the right hands with lots of pure equity, you can build up a stack of chips and move from the underdogs to the leaders, using more aggression in the right place at the right time, and of course, a bit of luck.
- Don't be afraid to respond when you are low on chips.
Thinking that with 6-15BB before the open you can only fold or shove is wrong. This is outdated advice that certainly cannot be called true when you look at the odds available from the BB.
If you are faced with a small opening and you have a hand that is a little too weak to push all the chips, but too strong to fold, you can simply call.
3 tips for a solid BB strategy cashe
- Pay attention to the size of the openings.
Cash games are characterised by a wide range of opening sizes, which can vary from 2x to 5x or 6x in live games. Because of this, your pot odds will vary from situation to situation, it is important to be able to adapt to this and change your BB defense range.
- Take advantage of the positional advantage you have over SB.
When everyone up to the SB has folded, you only need to fold one player to win the pot. This encourages your opponent to open very often. As the BB, this should encourage you to defend very often. You are in position, you know that SB's opening range is extremely wide, and by the way, you have already invested 1BB in the pot, which seems like a recipe for a wide defending range.
- Adapt to your opponents' playing patterns.
One of the advantages of cash is that it's easier to discover reliable observations about your opponents' play after playing with the same players for a while. Take advantage of this and change your BB defence strategy based on your observations.
If a player opens up who plays very narrowly, you also narrow your defensive range. Conversely, if you meet a maniac who opens 80%, don't give up your blinds without a fight.
Translated from: https://www.upswingpoker.com/big-blind-defend-strategy-mtt-vs-cash/
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