Playing from the Small Blind in MTTs

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There is a lot of potentially conflicting advice about how to play from the blinds in MTTs going around these days. Much of it comes from the fact that a huge percentage of the hands you’ll play in any given tournament either require you to play from the blinds, or against the players in the blinds – this means a lot of time and energy should be, and is, dedicated towards evolving the definition of ‘optimal strategy’ in these spots as the MTT game evolves. As one side of an argument develops, one strategy emerges, and thus a counter-strategy emerges and the argument becomes two-sided.

Considering how important it is to identify a strategy for playing from the blinds that fits well with your own overall MTT strategy (i.e. are you aggressive or nitty, do you like to see flops or put pressure on preflop), I believe it’s pivotal for micro- or low-stakes players to understand how to play from the blinds as early as possible in their careers – and not only that, but to take personal responsibility for staying up to date with how other players and regulars are playing in today’s game, and evolve their own strategy accordingly. What follows are some general guidelines for forming your own strategy when playing in the small blind, to be followed by another article about playing the big blind.

Flat less, 3bet more

If you look at the Holdem Manager statistics of any good tournament player and pull up the ‘cold call preflop raise’ statistic sorted by position, the lowest percentage will almost always be in the small blind (with the possible exception of UTG+1 for a player who plays a lot of nine-handed games). The reason for this is very simple – in the small blind, you’re guaranteed to be out of position going to a flop, and that’s not something you want. It’s less crucial in multiway pots, where you’re usually trying to flop something strong or get out, but in heads-up pots, flatting too many hands from the small blind can turn into a huge leak.

The counterpoint to this, and the factor that allows us to continue to stay active in the small blind when facing a preflop raise, is that we should often be taking hands that we might consider flatting preflop in position, and turning them into 3bet bluffs instead, to take advantage of the wide ranges that villains have on the button and give ourselves some preflop fold equity, as well as postflop initiative. It can often be advisable to 3bet/fold with a hand like AJo, ATs, 99, or KQo in the small blind when deep stacked, as a way to both extract value from the calling ranges of villains on the button, and avoid the need to play a potentially tricky pot postflop without the initiative.

Complete a lot in limped pots

Limped pots don’t come along too often beyond the early stages of a tournament. They come along even less often as you get higher up the stakes. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth talking about how to play them – they’re an unfamiliar situation for many players. Usually the best approach to take is that if there are multiple limpers in the pot already and action comes to you in the small blind, your raising range and your folding range should both be quite narrow, and you should be completing the blind with a very wide range. When deep stacked, there are conceivable situations where it would be incorrect to fold any hands at all in a multiway limped pot. As stacks get shallower, adapt your completing range and narrow it closer toward a range of more suited, more connected, more flop-friendly hands, and fold hands that will get you into tricky spots with weak top pairs.

If you 3bet an aggressive villain, be ready to 5bet

These days, MTT regs are aware that people 3bet a lot from the small blind. When they open the button, they’re aware that they’re going to face a 3bet a decent amount of the time. Usually, they’re aware of their own stack size, and the options they have with it – this means at certain stack sizes, your 3bet is very likely to be met with a 4bet shove, or a 4bet bluff if deeper stacked. As a result, bear in mind the aggression level of each villain you choose to 3bet from the small blind, and

if you see a spot where a potential 3bet is likely to be met by a 4bet bluff from an aggressive villain, pick a 3bet bluffing range that you’re not unhappy ripping in the villain’s face with if it happens. Don’t 3bet Q6s and then end up folding when the inevitable 4bet comes. Do it with a hand like A5s, or 44, or QTs, and then pile your 35bb stack on his head when he 4bets and watch him snapfold.

Size your 3bets according to stack sizes

It is generally accepted these days that out of position 3bets should be bigger, but not a lot of people take time to consider the reasons why. It makes sense that when we’re out of position, we don’t want to give the villain good odds to call in position. But the extra consideration is that when we’re 3betting out of position, we’re doing it from the blinds. That’s the only place we can 3bet out of position from. We’re also usually 3betting versus late position raisers with wide ranges when we do it, so the percentage of their opening ranges with which they are comfortable flatting our 3bets goes down. We don’t mind about the times they 4bet or shove, because position isn’t relevant when we’re not going to play postflop.

It goes down even further when stacks are shorter, and they don’t have any kind of implied odds with which to speculate against our theoretically stronger range. This means that a lot of the time when stacks are shorter, our 3bets can get smaller too – the ideal scenario is a player opening a very wide range from a stack of 20-25bb, meaning we can 3bet very small and still expect them to fold a lot of their range. After all, they’re not going to flat hands like A4o or T8o to our 3bet very often on <25bb, even in position. If a player minraises at 500/1000/100 blinds and antes from a 22bb stack, we can be comfortable 3betting to something like 4300-4700 out of position, and 3700-4100 in position. However, if the same player opens from a 50bb stack, we should consider making it 5100-5500 out of position or 4100-4500 in position. The deeper the stacks, the more we get flatted, so broadly speaking, we’re going for fold equity out of position and pot inflation in position.

Bear in mind the ‘Sweet Spot’ for restealing

The concept of ‘restealing’ has been around for a long time in MTTs. Every regular is familiar with it. It’s a key part of long-term success, knowing how to turn villains’ wide button ranges against them, and you’ll be doing it from the small blind more than any other position. The key with ‘restealing’ as a concept is to identify the occasions where you have significant fold equity along with a hand that has good preflop equity when called.

The less fold equity you have, the more equity you need to have when called, up to a point – a hand like KTo might be great to shove for 15bb when you have a lot of fold equity, but terrible with 8bb when the opener is extremely unlikely to fold. It might also be similarly terrible with 20bb or more, once you’re risking far too many chips for a small reward. The book Kill Everyone identified the ‘Sweet Spot’ several years ago as being between 19-23bb, but I would suggest that in today’s game it’s closer to 15-19bb. Players today have identified that it is possible to take a 20bb stack and do something other than shove over a raise preflop.

Don’t minraise the small blind in blind vs blind pots (usually)

This is a relatively simple concept. When you raise in the small blind, you’re putting yourself and the big blind in a unique situation – the player who has position postflop also closes the action preflop. This makes blind vs blind play a very profitable situation for the big blind, and a difficult one for the small blind. As a result, our strategy in the small blind should involve a reluctance to see a large number of flops out of position.

If we’re reluctant to see flops, the way to ensure it happens that little bit less often is to make sure that even though we don’t want to risk that much when we open a wide range from the small blind in an attempt to take down the big blind, we’re also not granting the big blind the luxury of an incredibly profitable preflop spot in position. At a standard blind/ante level of 50/100/10, a minraise from the small blind creates a spot where the big blind faces a preflop pot of 390 chips, but a bet of only 100 chips to call. We’re giving them 3.9:1 odds, in position. If we’re deep-stacked, this situation gets even worse. The big blind only has to win the pot maybe 21-22% of the time in order to make it a profitable preflop call with any two cards, and considering it’s a heads-up pot, the player in position is probably going to win it around 50-60% of the time at an estimate. It is hard to see any eventuality whereby we could recoup the huge edge we’re granting the big blind in this spot, even if we’re a much more skilled postflop player.

Conversely, a raise to 300 chips instead of a minraise in the same spot generates a slightly different scenario. It adds another 100 chips to the pot, making it 490 preflop, but another 100 chips for the big blind to call, meaning he or she is calling 200 to win a pot of 490. This is giving them less than 2.5:1, a huge change in odds. They now need to win the pot 40% of the time in order to make the play profitable, necessitating a fold with a lot of the hands they could previously have played profitably. It also gives them some more incentive to 3bet preflop, since the pot they could win is bigger – this plays in our favour, as it polarises their ranges and allows us to turn blind vs blind play into a more preflop-oriented game.

This is not to say I specifically advocate 3x opening from the small blind – indeed, I think the majority of the time, you can often get away with playing exploitably and raising less than this. I usually go between 2.5x and 2.75x. There are occasionally times when shorter stacks – perhaps even as low as 12-15bb – and tight villains mean that the big blind is very unlikely to flat your raise with any range. In these instances, it’s perfectly okay to make it a minraise or only very slightly more, since there aren’t many ways that villains can adapt to it. However, the more deep-stacked you are, the bigger the advantage you give the big blind by allowing them to play the pot in position with you while getting good odds.

NB: Many players like to have an open limping range in blind vs blind spots at many stack sizes. I personally haven’t experimented with this enough to have a detailed opinion on it, but I think there is certainly reason to believe that a solid small blind limping strategy could be developed by a player who had spent enough time on it. Indeed, to my knowledge it’s a strategy frequently employed by some cash game players.

In blind vs blind spots, raise the top and bottom, open-shove the middle

Generally speaking, when it comes to playing the small blind on a very short stack (<12bb), open-shoving becomes standard with a wide range. Do some math work on this to work out exact shoving ranges based on villains’ assumed calling ranges. Conversely, however, when you get to a bigger stack between 12-20bb, you can start splitting your ranges – I’ll cover this topic in general in another article, but the gist of it is that you can raise/induce with your strongest hands, raise/fold your weakest hands for balance, and open-shove the middle of your range, i.e. the hands that are very profitable preflop shoves but don’t do very well as hands to raise-call, such as Q9s, KTo or 22.

This is somewhat exploitable over time, but the advantage of it is that equities run so closely together with so many of these hands that you’re effectively asking your opponent to accept more coinflips if he wants to open his calling ranges to exploit you – if he starts calling 33 because he knows you shove 22, he still flips vs Q9 or KT. If he starts calling QT because he knows you shove Q9, he’s dominated by KT and flips with 22.

If in doubt, play tight

The final word on the small blind is that it’s the hardest position to play in full-ring or 6-max poker, and despite the advice I’ve given above, it’s important not to over-complicate your approach if you’re still just starting out in MTTs. Give yourself time to test out the ideas above, and if you’re struggling with any of them, don’t be afraid to just tighten up. There’s a reason why people advocate

‘ABC’ or ‘TAG’ poker at low stakes – because it works. There are plenty of ways to win at poker at low levels without trying to reinvent the wheel, so if you’re not playing at a level where you encounter the same players regularly, or even at a level where your games contain a decent number of winning players, then you have plenty of time to implement the concepts above and learn how to use them profitably. Don’t rush it, review and re-evaluate regularly, and soon enough your profitability from the small blind will start steadily rising.