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Poker Tips for Beginners (Part 2): Blind Stealing
If it folds to you in late position and you decide to open for a raise, then a large portion of your profits will usually come from the times the blinds fold. Being able to accurately assess the conditions for stealing blinds will allow you to add a lot of money to your win-rate without much effort. The idea behind poker tips for beginners should be to make the most money with the least amount of complicated poker theory, and a basic understanding of stealing blinds achieves just that.
On the most basic level, everyone left to act will fold some percentage of the time on average. If everyone folds often enough, then you can be raising with any two cards. For example, if you open raise to three times the big blind, and everyone folds a total of 70%, then that means 70% of the time you win 1.5 big blinds, and 30% of the time you lose 3 big blinds. If we plug that into an EV equation, we get the following:
EV = 0.70(1.5) + 0.30(-3)
EV = 1.05 – 0.90
EV = 0.15
So on average, your blind steal by itself is worth 0.15 big blinds. That might not seem like much, but remember that if the blinds were $1/2, that’s $0.30 made from one action. If you had this chance every hand, you’d be making $30 per 100 hands just from blind stealing.
There are a few general factors we can think about that contribute to the EV of a blind steal. First is how the people left to act tend to play. In general, people who fold a lot are gold to our left, and people who 3-bet a lot aren’t much fun to have on our left. People who call a lot can be good or bad depending on how they play after the flop, and whether or not we have position.
Another important factor for consideration is the size of our raise. If we raise to four times the big blind, we need our opponents to fold a lot more than if we raise to three times the big blind. Against the right opponents, it can even be correct to minraise pre-flop, as long as we’re in position. Open minraising from the small blind is pretty terrible since the big blind is getting 3:1 to see a flop, meaning he will call a huge percentage of the time, and he will have position for the rest of the hand, which puts us at a huge disadvantage post-flop.
The Basics of Badugi
Online games have brought poker to the masses and popularity is at an all time high. This has in turn lead to the popularity of previously little known variations such as Badugi to be searched out and found as people look for new games.
Badugi is a game for 2 up to 6 players and the game is a low card game, getting used to this can be strange at first especially if you have been used to playing the more popular games such as holdem which is a high card game. As well as been a low card game Badugi is also a draw game, meaning as the game is played out, players have the opportunity to exchange some of their cards with cards from the pack. To begin a game the player will have to make a choice of table to play at, the table can be one of three kinds, limit, pot limit or half pot limit; this refers to the betting structure of the game.
Players receive 4 cards face down from the dealer at the start of each hand. The aim of the game is to have 4 cards that are neither paired or suited, share the same number or suit, ideally the numbers will also be as low as possible. An example of one of the best possible hands would be 4 of H, 3 of C, 2 of S, A of D. If a player has a hand like this it is called by the same name as the game, the Badugi hand.
There are 3 rounds or draws during which you have the option to call/check, raise or fold just as in any other game of poker. You also have the opportunity to replace cards during each draw. Get rid of any matched cards and receive new cards from the stack. If ever player draws cards and the deck runs out of cards, usually the discarded cards are re shuffled and used again.
The pre draw round starts with the player to the left of the big blind, if no blinds the dealer, and goes clockwise. Big Blind is usually placed by the player to the left of the small blind and is usually the size of the minimum bet. The small blind is placed by the player to the left of the dealer and is half the size of the big blind.
Those still remaining at the end having not folded reveal their cards in the showdown. Any paired cards left in the hand at showdown must be discarded.