Q&A #53: Blind Stealing and Blind Defense - An Overview

Hi Ed, I hope you’re staying warm.

I’m in a live no-limit game. The person on my right has been there 45 mininutes and been in 4 or 5 hands, won 2 of them with 1 showdown.

There are 4 limpers, he completes sb and I get a free play in bb with J4o. The flop comes QJ4 rainbow. He checks, I bet 7bb’s into a 6bb pot.
All fold to sb and he cr’s me to a total of 22 bb’s, ( so a raise of 15 bb’s into 23 bb pot ).

I have no read except he’s not an idiot or maniac. Of course I think maybe strong queen but wouldn’t he have raised preflop, seemed smallish to be a play at the pot. I think, even though more unlikely with card distribution, QJ ? I admit this took me by surprise.

I am trying in the last 5 months to think more like a no-limit player than the limit player I have been previously. In limit I auto rr here. But I felt like he might be trying to build a big pot. Bottom 2 pair is vulnerable. I am embarassed to say I pussed and folded. ( He had 150 bb’s, I had around 300 bb’s). I hope my weak play was not me stupidly trying to protect my hard won stack.

So I guess my rambling question is a plea for help. How should I play bottom 2 pair in this situation?

Wow, that is a tight fold! You have position, and you could well have the best hand. Are you really that worried about facing QJ?

Ed says: “Usually the logic goes like this, ‘The blinds come around a lot more often, so each hand costs a lot more to play. If I keep playing tight, I’ll just get blinded out, so I need to start playing a lot more hands to compensate.’ That ‘logic’ is severely flawed.”

This is yet another reason why it’s bad to try to learn about poker by watching it on TV. Just about all of the TV commentators I have seen preach that flawed logic.

Ed and Shrike, Yeah, I stewed for the next half hour. I felt like I couldn’t think fast enough and monsters under the bed weakass fold. No, in my mind QJ or 44 didn’t seem that likely.

One thing I at least think I have noticed in my no-limit conversion is that I get a free play in big blind, flop what appears to be decent hand with a hand I normally would never play, and then get my ass lit up. Or not win much.

So I was taken by surprise, made a fold I probably have never made before, felt like a puss and thus have posted this with my shame on open display. I wondered if I should have gone for cr myself but I don’t like to get cute with bottom 2.

I guess my rushed faulty thinking was I couldn’t put what seemed like a tight player check-raising with a weaker hand than my bottom 2. But yes, I felt the flushed cheeks of weak-tight self-humiliation immediately after.

No, I wouldn’t, come to think of it. I was trying to resolve differences with limit and thought why not bet out a nice bet,you don’t need cr to protect your hand. would that hand be strong enough to chance letting in 3 or 4 before check-raising.

I was trying the unfamiliar process of thinking who is most likely to go broke here.

I feel I should have come back over the top. I still feel calling would have been the worst of the 3, but maybe not.

As a bonus, could you give me an example of a prudent ‘weak fold’ in no-limit.

Thanks Ed.

As you can see i am looking at the calendar everyday awaiting the release of your new book. I’m very excited. In the meantime, variance has been sweet to me I am winning a fair rate. Hopefully your book will be out before “live by the variance, die by the variance” has a chance at me.

Hi,
I´ve been playing a lot in very tight fullring limit games lately, where many players are have a VPIP 16-20%.
So I am wondering mainly, at what position can I start stealing? When I can be relatively shure that the people behind ar all quite unskilled defenders, which means they probably defend with not much more then 10% of their hands. So there my standard is to start off at MP3 with something like every Ace, K8o+, QT+, every pocket pair and loosen up some more when approaching the Button. Could I steal even more? Or is it to way loose to start stealing with almost half the table yet to act?

you could have put this in one liner like it depends…but good read nonethereless, maiby some ranges you would take would be more usefull

Ed,

Thanks for addressing to this topic. Check your tip jar.

“Now you can definitely play short-stacked very profitably in a 6-handed game. In fact, it may be even MORE profitable in 6-handed than in 10-handed. You just have to loosen up from the standards in GSIH. I’ll give more specifics in a future post.”

Any idea when this future will come to pass?