Playing From the Big Blind in MTTs

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Recently I posted an article about how to play the small blind in MTTs, or at least a snapshot of some of the different strategies that might help you to improve the profitability of your play from the small blind. Following that up with an article about the big blind was the next logical step. The way people play the big blind in MTTs has been changing a lot in the past year or two, so I hope that this article (providing it flies sufficiently under the radar) will give TPE members some insight into how the game has evolved recently.

The key principle – direct odds matter

Probably the main difference between playing the big blind and playing any other position is the fact that we are always getting better pot odds in that position than anywhere else. There’s no other position where we can conceivably be getting 9:1 or 10:1 odds or even better preflop in certain circumstances, and thus being in the big blind often leaves us in some unusual spots. It puts us in situations we’re unfamiliar with, and effectively forces us to play hands we wouldn’t normally play.

When you’re approaching a decision in the big blind, the preflop odds you’re getting should always be a consideration. From time to time, you’ll be getting such good odds that you can’t turn down a spot that seems a little crazy to start with – perhaps you’ll be entering a six-way pot with 74o, or Q3s, or even just calling a button open with K4s or Q7s. You’ll be in spots sometimes that feel strange and unprofitable, but remember – if you’re getting 8.5:1 to enter a pot with three players already in there, you only have to win the pot maybe 12-13% of the time against those three guys to make this a profitable play.

Not to mention, because you’re getting such great odds preflop you don’t need to expose yourself to potential reverse implied odds, either – you can choose to fold in an awkward spot on the flop and not care, as opposed to fighting hard to win the pot and justify a marginal preflop call you just made. You can take the spots where you flop two pair or better (around 1 in 50 times with a random unpaired, offsuit hand) and focus on the great implied odds you’re getting. After all, who’s going to see it coming when the flop comes Q42r and you turn up with Q4hh in a four-way pot? The guy with AQ or KK+ is never folding on that flop.

The other key principle – reverse implied odds often don’t matter as much as you think

A lot of the logic I’ve seen from some of my students lately is geared towards the idea that certain hands shouldn’t be played from the big blind because of reverse implied odds. This is true to an extent, but the extent is less extreme than many people think. Take, for example, the act of calling from the big blind versus a button raise with a hand like A5o. Ordinarily, many people might assume that this is a spot where calling with a hand like that at, say, 50bb effective, is a really bad spot to be in, due to the likelihood of domination by a better ace, the possibility for an awkward spot out of position, or the possibility of losing a big pot. There are certainly times vs very good players when this is entirely true, but there are also times when it is entirely false.

The key thing about this situation is the range against which you’re playing the hand. If the villain’s range is very wide, such as a standard button raising range which could be anywhere from around 50% of hands to more than 90% depending on the villain, then the equity of a hand like A5o is greatly increased, and the frequency with which you find yourself up against a hand that dominates you is drastically reduced. For example, a standard aggressive middle position opening range of around 18% of hands contains 242 hand combinations, 98 of which contain an ace that beats A5. This means when we defend A5o versus this middle position range, we’re dominated around 40.4% of the time. Conversely, however, a button opening range of around 60% contains 798 hand combinations, only 134 of which are dominating Ax hands, leaving us dominated only 16.7% of the time. It seems reasonable from this that, if we are confident in our own postflop ability and we have a good read on the villain’s level of aggression (street-by-street aggression numbers in your HUD are great for this) then we can certain stop worrying quite so much about calling with hands that are easily dominated, when the villain’s range is very wide.

There’s no such thing as ‘your’ big blind

One trap I see people falling into sometimes is believing that when they are in the big blind, the big blind itself is ‘theirs’. It’s a part of their stack that they have to protect, and other aggressive players are trying to ‘attack it’, or ‘steal it’. This thought pattern is erroneous and can lead to poor decisions. The fact is that once you have put the big blind from your stack into the pot, it’s part of the pot. It’s not yours, and it never was. You shouldn’t get attached to it. Playing the big blind is just like any pot when it comes to evaluating the situation and evaluating other players’ ranges – it’s not about pride, ego, or protecting what you perceive as ‘yours’. I’m not a big fan of the phrase ‘defending the big blind’ for the same reason.

Calling on short stacks is perfectly acceptable

Something that has become part and parcel of the MTT game these days has been the idea that a 20bb stack or lower is no longer ‘shove or fold territory’. Indeed, if you’re in the big blind facing a minraise, it can often be a much lower-variance play to simply take a flop getting 3.5-1 or better with some hands that flop well. Anything from a hand like K6s to J8s to QTo can be a good candidate to take a flop and try to flop a strong pair or draw. From there, you have every option from check-shoving a lot of flops to check-folding when you miss, check-calling your strongest hands, or taking down a lot of pots on the turn when players check back flops.

The caveat to this is that there are certain types of hands – small pairs and Ax hands, for the most part – that are strong enough to shove with fold equity, but don’t flop well enough to flat in this spot. Similarly, there are certain instances where shoving a hand like KJo or JTs over an open-raise for 14-18bb might be so obviously profitable that flatting actually becomes the inferior option, despite the strength of the hand and its flop-friendly nature. The deciding factor here, in my opinion, should be the skill level of the villain and the average skill level of the tournament – in a soft tournament, you should be more inclined to flat and take flops, and reduce the number of all-in confrontations you get into. But if the open-raiser is a better postflop player than you, or if the tournament is very tough, it’s perfectly acceptable to turn some of these flat-call hands into resteal shoves and simply tolerate a higher level of variance in your game.

Sometimes you can peel-fold off crazy stack sizes

Very occasionally, a spot will come along where you have between 6-10bb in the big blind and a multiway pot is developing ahead of you. Four or five players enter the pot, and before you know it, it gets to you and you’re getting 12:1 with 98s. Shoving preflop is basically pure gambling, but with those odds, it’s not the worst idea to simply peel the big blind and try to flop something. It gets awkward if the flop is A92r and you have the 98, but you can check-decide at times like that, and when the flop comes 762, or K54 with your flush draw, or JT2, you can donk-shove for roughly a pot-sized bet and give yourself a decent chance at getting it in with fold equity plus plenty of outs. It’s perfectly acceptable to play hands this way, because you’re effectively generating fold equity where you didn’t have it before, and you give yourself the chance to get away when you flop no equity whatsoever. There are only certain flop-friendly hands you should do this with, but it’s definitely a worthwhile play from time to time.

More flat-calling means you need to 3bet a polarized range

The fact that we’re flat-calling a wider range of hands in a lot of these big blind spots has an interesting effect on our 3bet range. Since when we’re on an average stack size (say 35-40bb) we’re going to be defending a lot of the hands that we might include in our light 3betting range on the button or elsewhere, such as suited Ax/Kx/Qx hands or low suited connectors, and we’re also going to choose to flat sometimes with some of the stronger hands we might 3bet for value with in position, such as 88-TT, AT-AQ, or KQ. This means that our flatting range extends from both ends, which helps us to keep it fairly balanced.

The after-effect of our flatting range widening from both ends means that when we do have our very strongest hands, such as JJ+ or AK, we obviously still want to be able to 3bet them, but we don’t want to get to the point where we’re only 3betting our very strongest hands – at least, not against any decent players. Versus very weak players this isn’t a problem, but against anyone able to make accurate deductions about our ranges, if they see us flatting every big blind and our 3bet statistic from the big blind is very low, they’re eventually going to start folding some strong hands to our big blind 3bets. This means we need to start taking hands that we don’t feel comfortable flatting preflop, and turning them into 3bet bluffs, just for the sake of actually having a 3bet bluffing range. Good candidates for this are offsuit hands that do have some blocker value, such as weak Ax/Kx/Qx hands, or perhaps some of the most unconnected suited hands like T3s or J4s. Obviously in these spots we’re very uncomfortable when we get flatted, but if we’re using our standard 3bet sizings, then it’s hard for us to get into any particularly tricky spots – once we get flatted and our cbet gets called, it’s not like we’re going to get ourselves stacked when we make one pair with T3s.

Blind vs blind – play lots of hands!

This is a very simple point – blind vs blind is one of the most profitable situations you can find in poker, providing you’re the one in the big blind. It gives you the chance to act last preflop and postflop, and you’ll be able to play a wide range of hands with full freedom to control the size of the pot. Don’t waste these opportunities – your calling range preflop in blind vs blind pots should be very wide, especially if the small blind minraises. It’s worth considering flatting small blind raises with flop-friendly hands, right down to a stack size of perhaps 12-15bb sometimes. Similarly, with hands that don’t flop well, don’t be afraid to shove in the small blind’s face for 15-22bb if he’s very active, and make sure to spend some time doing the math on optimal calling ranges based on your assumptions about villains’ open-shoving ranges from the small blind.

Final thought – stay tight vs early position raisers

Finally, it should be noted that the majority of these big blind strategies are designed for use versus late position openers with wide ranges. In most instances versus players opening from earlier positions – particularly from UTG or UTG+1 – I would advocate a very tight big blind strategy, much closer to what could be described as an ‘ABC’ or ‘TAG’ approach. Against players with strong, tight ranges, there’s only so much you can really do without risking chips unnecessarily.