$ 10/20 defending blinds

[Maulik]

While I don't call Q10 in early position, do you defend a blind since you have a portion of pot equity, if it appears we have a hero in late position trying to steal blinds? And if you beleive they are trying to steal blinds, do you re-raise them?

[Maulik]

I'm still looking for some insight.

[bobbyi]

It's really hard to answer because it is so opponent-dependent. There are some people in the 10/20 I usually play who think that stealing blinds is unsportsmanlike and a petty waste of time. They raise when folded to in late position with pretty much the same hands they raise in any other situation. Calling these people with QTo would be terrible. There are other people who will raise when folded to on the button almost every time. If people are raising with 47s, then folding QT would be terrible. You really need to try to judge the opponent. I usually would just call with QTo rather than three-betting if I was playing it since I perfer to save my three-bets for hands with some showdown value and because QT just isn't that great a hand, but if someone is attacking your blinds with almost anything, then you need punish him by three-betting with a pretty wide range of hands and this one can be good enough.

[slavic]

bobbyi sums it up pretty well. Blind defense is always a tough subject because you normally have an uncertain hand, your out of position, versus a fairly unpredictable hand. Add to this that 65% of the time you don't flop jack.

There are certain hands that you just have to 3 bet preflop because you give up too much if you don't. Big aces, big pairs, ect. If someone raise 75o against your kings preflop you might as well take the extra bet preflop because there aren't many flops he can continue with, and if it's a marginal flop he may take a freebie when you try and check raise. That's not good.

Certain hands are hopeless. 63o is just flat out hard to do anything with. Cut bait and let her go.

QTo versus a steal is playable, but I'm not going to get too frisky with it.