Defending your blinds in Poker

May 30, 2010

Blinds in Poker

Learn how to defent your blinds

Stealing the blinds in poker is quite satisfying and can be extremely profitable for the person who is stealing them but getting your blinds stolen from you can be immensely frustrating. It happens to everyone sometimes but, occasionally, you get a player who is extremely adamant about stealing your blinds. Dealing with these types of players and this situation can be difficult but there are ways to fight back against players who try and do this all the time. Taking action against people who steal the blinds all the time will either reduce the regularity in which he or she attempts to steal your blinds are stop it altogether.

You can defend your blind from either the small blind or the big blind and it does not matter too much from which you are defending. There are a number of different things that you have to take into account when you are planning on defending your blind though and doing it poorly or at a bad time to defend it can make it backfire with epic results. The first and most important thing to remember is that you should just jump in and defend your blind the first time that someone is trying to steal it. Unless it has happened a number of times, you should not jump in with a poor hand and defend it.

The next thing that is important to remember is to try to defend your blind in the most ideal situation which is where you have a playable hand. Defending your blind with a bad or extremely speculative hand is a very risky proposition but if you have a decent hand, it is much less risky to put in a raise. With that said, it is sometimes unavoidable to defend your blind with a hand that is less than stellar and in these scenarios you should avoid getting into a reraise battle with opponent.

If your hand is better, however, and especially if you have a larger chip stack, do not be afraid to re-reraise if the person reraises you and you think that they are just trying to push you around. I have had occasions where I have pushed all in defending my blind. I do not recommend pushing all in to defend your blind if you can avoid it as it has both succeeded and failed spectacularly for me. The entire point of defending the blind is to show strength to the player or players who are trying to take advantage of the inherent weakness of being the blinds and standing up for yourself. If you show continued weakness at the poker table, the other players will circle you like sharks and continue to peck at you until you have no chips left.

Defending your blinds is something that you occasionally have to do in order to keep a strong table image and prevent players from trying to walk all over you. Poker players are like wild animals and if you show repeated signs of weakness they will attack you with full force so you occasionally have to stand tall and face the assault head on.

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