The 2/3 Small Blind: Defending and Stealing.

[Jeff W]

I moved up to 15/30 recently and I am still uncomfortable with small blind play. I'd like some advice on two areas that give me trouble.


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Part 1:

My FSB at 15/30 is 83%. I believe that I am not defending often enough. Here is my standard defense vs. a CO/Btn open-raise:

Call: 22-55/A2s-A6s/K9s/QTs-QJs/JTs

Raise: 66-AA/A7s-AKs/A9o-AKo/KTs-KQs/KJo-KQo

I will adjust these somewhat depending on my opponent's position(CO vs. Button) and his Pre Flop Raise%.

Am I way off here? Looking at these standards makes me think I'm too tight.


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Part 2:

HU vs. BB

When it is is folded around to me in the SB, should I be playing nearly all of my hands? I have been limping weak hands against opponents with low pfr and raising decent hands like Q8o and K4o. If I limp in with a hand like 76o against say a VPIP 17/PFR 8 player, should I call if he raises?


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Thanks for your help.

I especially appreciate links to past posts on this topic. I will search the archives myself and report any findings in this thread.

[catlover]

Add some hands vs. button raises:

any two suited cards 7 or higher
any two cards 9 or higher

Personally I raise with all of them.

[catlover]

One other thing -- the 1/2 vs. 2/3 blind thing makes surprisingly little difference in this spot. Think about it this way. The difference is 1/6 of a small bet. Now the average pot you are going to play here is probably 6 big bets or so. That means the difference in the size of your blind is about 1/72 of the pot. That's worth the same as a 1.4% change in your chance of winning.

Increasing your kicker by a pip, say from Q8o to Q9o, raises your chance of winning at the river by about 2.4% against a typical button raising range.

So, the quality of your hand is the determining factor.

[Nate tha' Great]

Just to answer Part II, because I never quite got settled on a strategy for some of the stuff in Part I:

I don't think you should be playing "nearly all" of your hands in this spot, and it depends very much on the opponent.

Against a tight and passive opponent, you should be open-raising very liberally, and never just completing. That should be fairly obvious. The chance of stealing the blinds is just too great to do anything different and it should be easy to tell where you're at preflop when the opponent plays on.

Against a tight and aggressive opponent it's still an always raise/never complete scenario but I might dump some of the weak Shania hands like Q6o and K2o that are tough to play postflop.

Against a loose, passive opponent you can consider doing some open-completing, but should probably still be open-raising with any hand that has an equity edge. If I do open-complete and am raised, I'd call with everything except those hands that have severe domination problems.

A loose aggressive opponent is the toughest case, and probably requires you to play the tightest. If the game is running shorthanded and it's getting folded to my SB pretty often, I may incorporate some open-completing with implied odds type hands like 64s and supplement it with occasional limp-reraises. Oterwise it's back to an always open-raise strategy IMO, but requires a tighter range of hands. I'm okay with dumping the K2o types of hands here, especailly if he plays not only aggressively but also pretty well after the flop.

[tablecop]

my default play if i'm in the SB (2/3 structure), the pot is open-raised and then folded to me is to defend with approximately the same range of hands that i put the open-raiser on. which is to say if he'll open-raise with 15% of his hands in his position then i'll play the 15% of hands that do the best against his range. always 3 betting any PP in that range and calling or 3 betting the others depending on my read of the BB.

as to part II, i think you have equity with nearly everything except 93o,92o thru 43o,32o. how to play the rest depends on the BB.

[helpmeout]

PI

83% that is pitiful

2 cards above 8
any decent connectors or 2 gappers
semi decent suited cards

Thats pretty much how I play it obviously depending on the stealer and whoever is in BB.

My folded SB to steal is 60% I would say I am looser than most.

PII

I play all hands except when BB frequently raises HU then i'll drop the gutter trash stuff, pretty much anything like J2o J3o J4o and worse.

[Dazarath]

[ QUOTE ]

Part 1:

My FSB at 15/30 is 83%. I believe that I am not defending often enough. Here is my standard defense vs. a CO/Btn open-raise:

Call: 22-55/A2s-A6s/K9s/QTs-QJs/JTs

Raise: 66-AA/A7s-AKs/A9o-AKo/KTs-KQs/KJo-KQo

I will adjust these somewhat depending on my opponent's position(CO vs. Button) and his Pre Flop Raise%.

Am I way off here? Looking at these standards makes me think I'm too tight.


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I think which hands you choose to defend with should be a function of the stealer's ASB, not PFR. I have ASB as one of the displayed stats in PV. Before I started using PV, I'd have PT export the stat into my notes.

For example, if a played with an ASB of 10 open-raises on the button, I figure he's actually open-raising with a legitimate hand, and I'll fold most hands I wouldn't play against a normal raise.

Another thing I take into account is how well the player plays. When I see a player that will raise/3-bet every single time he tries to steal and is insistent on seeing showdown, I defend with more marginal hands, because I figure they'll pay me off when I hit. If the person just plays poorly in general, I figure they'll pay me off as well.

Here's a question that I have (for anyone). With low pockets (22-55), there's really only a select few flops that you really like to see (ie. a set). Obviously, that's not going to happen most of the time. When you don't hit a set, what determines whether or not you're going to see showdown? It's obviously a big leak if I just say to myself, I'm going to call down with low pockets everytime there's a steal. But it's also obviously -EV to call 0.5+ BB and then muck when I don't hit a set. Betting/raising the flop doesn't tell me enough about my opponent's hand often enough that I can say to myself with certainty that my 22 is no good. I see this flop/turn action almost every blind stealing hand to the point where I figure it's just an auto-play for a lot of players. Either checkraise flop, or bet/3-bet flop, and then half the time the button raises the turn with A high. So I feel that it's hard to gain information about stealers' hands, especially if they're overly aggressive in a heads up situation. It would seem to me that 22 should be playable against a steal though.

[Jeff W]

[ QUOTE ]
PI

83% that is pitiful

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Yeah, I agree. In my last database my FSB=70 and I was comfortable with that. How much tighter are you in a 1/2 structure compared to a 2/3 structure?

Thanks for the responses so far. I definitely have a lot of work to do on SB play.

[helpmeout]

I look at the 2/3 structure as almost being in the BB.

You know people are going to steal more because they are getting a higher return so you have to defend more. If you also have a weak tight player in the BB you are getting really good odds.

1/2 is different, they are getting a smaller return from stealing and you are also getting worse odds. Meaning they should steal less and you should defend much less.

I'm not to sure on the 1/2 structure I'd say just over 70 would be fine but it depends on the game.

[pfkaok]

[ QUOTE ]
PI

83% that is pitiful

2 cards above 8
any decent connectors or 2 gappers
semi decent suited cards

Thats pretty much how I play it obviously depending on the stealer and whoever is in BB.

My folded SB to steal is 60% I would say I am looser than most.


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Which, if any of these hands are you typically calling with? or are there any hands that your default would be to just call the raise rather than 3bet? my folded SB to steal is too high as well, and with the 2/3 structure i find myself calling with some hands from the SB, but it never reallly feels right.