Advanced Poker Advice: Playing the Small Blind

"The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable." - Sun Tzu

Oct. 23, 2007

By Smith Collins
Bodog Nation Contributing Writer

One of the biggest leaks that most players in today's tournament fields have is that they play far too many hands "out of position." This proves to be a horrendous strategy in the long run, because people get to see what you do first and can act accordingly while you are left guessing. The seat that is the most abused out-of-position spot is the small blind, as it is always the first seat to act on any flop whenever he chooses to see one.

They don't call it a "blind" for nothing. The danger of playing the small blind can't be emphasized enough as it's like playing in the dark.

A large portion of your winnings come from playing hands in late position and playing them aggressively, not timidly seeing flops in bad positions with weak holdings. With enough experience, you will begin to realize that position itself is far more important than the two cards you are holding, and that you should begin to adjust your strategy accordingly.

One way I exploit this positional advantage is to almost always give the big blind a walk. A "walk," for those of you not familiar with the term, means to fold your hand in the small blind if it folds around to you, and there are a number of positive sides to this.

For example, let's say you have Ac-3c in the small blind at the $300/$600 blind level of a poker tournament, and it folds around to you. Let's also suppose that the very next hand it folds around to you on the button with 8-9 suited, and you raise it to $1,700 pre-flop. Now, if you had played that last ace-rag hand, which was likely to either win you a small pot or lose you a big pot when playing it out of position, your raise on the button here would look extremely suspect and would most likely be played back with high aggression. But if you had folded the A-3, your raise from the button would have had much higher credibility. Not only will this cause more people to fold pre-flop, but you will also notice a dramatic increase in the amount of respect you get when you make a continuation bet on the flop.

To summarize, you shouldn't be afraid to fold better hands in worse position (specifically the small blind), so that you can play weaker cards in position with multiple ways to win the hand. This gives you a large advantage over anyone who chooses to play a hand with you and proves the fact that position is far more important than cards. Following this advice will cause a dramatic improvement in anyone's results who isn't already paying attention to these things, and I hope I have given insight on how you can begin to adjust your overall game plan successfully.

TOP PHOTO: Team Bodog's Smith Collins.