The Poker Lab Rat

• Most players defend their blinds too often, but you must defend often enough to ward off automatic attacks.

• It’s marginally easier to defend your blind in a limit game or a multi-way pot, because you are receiving much better pot odds, but that still doesn’t make playing the blinds a winning position.

• Most players fails to recognize the huge inherent weaknesses involved when playing the remainder of the hand out of position; a decision to defend involves consideration of what will happen on future betting rounds.

• Defending doesn’t just mean calling; attack is often the best form of defence. Often, it is correct to ‘defend’ with a raise.

• When selecting hands with which to defend, be wary of hands that are likely to be dominated, like Aces or Kings with bad kickers. Look more favourably on connected middle cards or small pairs.

I’ll cover these points with some examples in the next couple of blog postings. Successful Blind play is one aspect that makes a big difference between good poker players, and great poker players.

Kishan Neilsen

>>Read my eariler posting on how to avoid throwing away money on the Blinds here.
Kishan is a US based professional poker player. His two preferred sites for online poker are Bodog Poker and Carbon Poker. Join him at a table soon!