By TylerDurden on March 12th, 2008 (more posts by author)

In my last entry, I wrote about what to do when the blinds are comparatively small. Now, what do you do when the blinds are comparatively big?

For example, at the Seminole Indian Casino Hollywood, the $1-$2 limit game is spread with $1-$1 blinds. In this case, there's 2 small bets in before the flop (as opposed to the "standard" 1 1/3 to 1 2/3 small bets). Can you say "blind stealing opportunity?" Risk $2 to win $2, you only have to be a favorite 50% of the time to win.

Of course, this needs to be tempered by the fact that proper play dictates defending your blind more (even the SB) -- a button raise to you in the SB gives you 4:1 odds on your call; if you're a winner more than 20% of the time, you've made money. In fact, you should consider reraising to a blind steal more (especially out of the BB); putting in $2 to win $4 means that you need to only win just over 1/3 of the hands you reraise to show a profit.

Additionally, you should loosen up slightly in a game like this. You're paying 2 small bets per orbit, so you need to be a bit more active than normal, and the extra money in the pot preflop makes it worth your time to do so (remember, if you open with a call, you only need to be the winner 1/3 of the time to break even). If you have any kind of a read on the players behind you, especially a "they're gonna call, not raise" read, all of a sudden early position can be played like middle position (eg, you can call UTG with K[c] T[c] as I did recently, flopping a flush and netting a $20 win).

So, to sum up the ideas from my little miniseries on making adjustments for weird blind limits:

As the blinds get comparatively smaller, fold more, raise less, steal less, and let your blinds go more.
As the blinds get comparatively bigger, fold less, raise more, steal more, and defend your blinds more vigorously.