Thoughts on chopping blinds
I was just thinking about the idea of chopping the blinds, and I was hoping some others could comment on the idea.
When I play, I usually chop with anyone who's willing to. I do this for a couple reasons. One, I'm happy to earn $0 or $-1 while in the blinds, and get on to the next hands, where I'm in late position and have positive expectation. Two, on a table where all of the other players are chopping, I don't want to stand out. I prefer people just see me as a kid who's come to play for fun, so I go with the flow, so to speak.
Now, assuming two equally skilled players, when heads up in the blinds, either the BB or the SB has a positive expectation and the other does not. Let's just assume it's the BB. I don't actually know which one it is, but I just wanted to make a point. So if the player to my left does not chop, then I'm not sure if I want to chop with the player on my right. If they both chopped, then I'm giving up both the +EV and -EV spots and averaging -$0.50 per chop. But in this situation, I'm losing the +EV spot, while being forced to play in the -EV spot. Do most players just continue to chop with one side to keep the game sped up?
My last thought is on time games. This is just sort of a whine, but oh well. In a time game, your EV for chopping is 0 for that hand, but +EV because you get to move onto the hands where you have positive expectation. I almost think it's annoying and selfish when players don't want to chop in timed games, because they're effectively costing the table some amount of money because "they came to gamble". Why can't they gamble by moving onto the next hand? The rest of the table now has to wait so that one player can "feel" like he's gambling more by playing in the blinds. Of course, this argument could then be extended to saying that the button should never steal because he's holding up the game and should always let the blinds chop, etc etc. This is why I don't ever really say anything.
These are just some thoughts of mine. If anyone else has anything to add, it would be appreciated.
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