Blinded off at No-Limit

Was I supposed to play before the blind, by defintion?


Situation: $100 NLHE at the Orleans. I have about T3000. 80000 in play. Two tables left. One table paid. 100 antes, blinds 300-600. I ended up throwing away every hand until my blind, when I posted a 100 blind, along with my ante. Is it possible that this was the right strategy? I won't go into the details about the hands, although as you might guess, I had no pairs, no aces and no decent kings during this stretch.


Danny

It's possible you played correctly, but not likely. If you go all-in for 3000, how often will you get called? You're winning something like 1800, and even if you get called you're a 2:1 dog on average, so you only need to succeed in stealing the blinds here about 30-40% of the time to break even on the chips, and you'll probably succeed more like 60-80% of the time.


Often you just need to wait until the big blind is somebody who's pretty tight, and then raise with anything.


Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

I agree with Greg. You have to make a move. You're in all likelyhood going to have to risk all in at some point given the situation. Another idea which I've used is this. A large raise comes in before your action from a player who you know doesn't have to have a great hand. This in my opinion is a good time to push the rest of your stack in to try and get heads up with him.


L.A.