Post for david...

[Steve Giufre]

David was kind enough to agree to respond to a post regarding blind defense. It seems to be one of the topics that keeps coming up lately, and there has been a lot of different on ideas on how we should be dealing with some common situations. I've been discussing this with Hiatus Over quite a bit lately, and I feel he is better suited to make this post than I am. This was written by him a few minutes ago:


I have had the pleasure to meet a bunch of mid-high posters in the last few months...Like dorks when we get together we talk poker-poker-poker. Everyone seems to be doing well which is real encouraging but one interesting thing that I have noticed is all of us winning players are taking many different approaches to defending our BB and to a lesser extent our SB...In HPFAP when discussing BB defense against a steal raise the advice given seems much tighter than what some extremely succesful high limit online players are reporting they are defending with. For example. During a live game with a bunch of 2+2'ers in it...A strong playing Cut-Off open raised. He is tough and tenacious. I was in the BB and folded T7o face-up and asked if this was a huge mistake. All 3 strong playing 2+2'ers told me I was making a huge mistake here. They said I was getting 3.5-1 closing the action and that I was way better than 3.5-1 against the range of hands...which is obviously true when all-in but I was always under the impression that the fact that u have no playing adavantages and a horrible implied odds hand out of position turned this into a relatively easy fold.

HPFAP on defending the BB against steal raises..."Against weak players who won't make good use of their position advantage on the flop u can call with hands as weak as those in Group 8. Howeever, it still might be best to throw some of the smaller non-suited connectors away...If someone calls in between you and your opponet or if your opponent play well, then you must tighten up some. But you can still play a lot of hands, perhaps Group 1-6" so we have a big discrepancy here between 2 sources I trust...1. the book I tore apart for 2 years straight and is the #1 reason why 3 years later I can go sit in any live 100-200 game in the country and feel like a favorite and have the bankroll to be comfortable....#2. a number of guys who play as tough as they come it seems and are bashing heads with some of the strongest players around and making a lot of money.

So, what should I be defending my blinds with? I look at the best Party Poker players and they are all taking different approaches...2 of the most respected players in the game for example are miles away on defending...one folds his BB to a steal raise 37 percent of the time, the other 58...they are both destroying the game. Also I have heard some stuff being thrown around 2+2 by simulators (Peter Runs, well respected winning player for 1) that u can play any 2 suited to a raise as long as its atleast 3-way...I thought and still think this cant be true. Can it? The math works all-in, but just doesnt seem right. 1 more example...I am teaching my very intelligent cousin limit hold em. Gave him pokerstove he is a math guy and is doing well with it. He sent me a hand where MP open raised...button 3-bet and my cousin called 87s in the BB...I told him this is way wrong, but when u plug it in to poker stove the math works out about even and it seems like it is a good implied odds spot. One last question for DS or whoever is good at searching the archives...I have a bet with JV about the old 73s thread that caught storm a year or so ago, I think it was mixed in with some Tommy Angelo is crazy post...Did DS say that we should always be defending 73s in the BB to raise HU or 3 way? I wont tell u what side we have, but I will tell u that the loser will have some embarrassing consequences for being wrong. Anyways...hope this gets some good discussion going about actual poker. Im sure I will have many more questions examples along the way but just wanted to throw this out there to start since David was kind of enough to say he would help us out with this.