Blind defense at the micros (2NL and 5 NL)
Hello there Evan Jarvis, my name is Carlos, I am from
brazil and I am poker student for about a year (studying seriously). Thanks a ton for your videos at YouTube, your articles and for being here with us in the Cardschat community. God bless you and your wise words at the videos, which lacks a lot in the general population who tries to teach poker.
I have a very serious question for you, and I hope you could help me and others to figure it out. As the title describes, I am seeking for an effective strategy for blinds defense at the micros.
A few days ago a wrote a text about the object of the 6-Max Cash game:
https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/6-max-goals-444903/, please I would love it if you could read this little thought about the objectives of the game and criticize, if possible. Because I do not believe I am the owner of the truth about the objetives of the 6-Max Cash Game, and readers, sometimes, are very polite.
Summarizing what I said in this little article quoted above, is that most of the times we are attacking and defending the blinds. We attack the blinds when we are in position and we see a recreational player out of position (SB and BB) that we might wanna play with it.
The article about 6-Max goals above also states that the best positions for stealing blinds are the Cut-Off (CO) and the Button (BTN), are you agree with that Jarvis? Please, let me know.
Now, the overall question revolves about how to properly defend the blinds at the micros. Because on the one hand we cannot call down very much from the BB and the SB specially, according to general population theory (High Rake). On the other hand, we must defend our blinds a lot, that's what almost entire poker community talks a lot but, not to the reality of the micro stakes in 2019 and 2020. (Players are very smart these days, even at 2 NL and 5 NL so default ideias are not working at all).
How can we defend 40%, 50%, 60% or 70% of the blinds, at the micro stakes, when the rake of 2 NL and 5 NL at PokerStars for example is something around 8% or 10% of the Pot? (correct me if I am wrong, I am not really sure about the rake of those stakes).
How can we defend 50% of BB and SB when it comes a raise of 3x? And when comes a raise of 4x?
Let us suppose that we are defending our blinds only against recreational players, okay? We know these guys with broken stacks and fancy moves (Fishes) love to call a lot. Most of times when they hit any part of their ranges they continue, and if it is a Top Pair they are easily going to the River facing Double Barrell or Triple. These guys, most of them are in the level 0 or at maximum level 2 of thought, so we know for experience they tend to be easy, but not the very easy Fish back there in 2009, 2010.
You said in one of your videos, Jarvis, that starting hands charts are not good. I agree totally because these charts miss on reality, they are not ever considering the table configuration, who are the players involved, which are the stack sizes of the whole table, and so on.
Not to be very long and confuse with my point of view, I would like to introduce a little of the Alex 'Assassinato' Fitzgeral ideia about blind defense:
Why Blind Defense is so important
A) If you fold every single hand from UTG, pre ante, you will lose nothing (it is four tournaments but we also have to defend our blinds in the cash game)
B) If you fold every single big blind you will be losing 100 BIG BLINDS PER 100 HANDS
The most hard is to DEFEND the blinds, because the attack seems a little more easy, for:
A) When Hero have position (CO or BTN) and have good information about recreational players in the SB, BB or both, or even of a recreational in the BTN that could call, we attack the blinds by opening a very wide range from the CO and BTN (40-50%), because we can try to win the pot Preflop by raising and stealing or win the pot Postflop by overplaying the recreational player out of position in relation to Hero. (how to overplay idiots, I ask myself these question everyday and never find a satisfactory answer)
B) In the Cash game Hero opens 100% range from SB against BB when it comes in Gap, if the Villain in the BB has at least 40 BB of stack size. When Villain has less than 40 BB left, Hero in the SB will be opening hands that he could embrace a Shove/Push, not only stealing. Why? Because the Big Blind will fold to much for stealing. Because SB opens 100% range in gap, with a 3.5x size, most of times, sometimes bigger when there is a huge Whale in the BB that we have known to be calling down 70-80% of times versus SB steal.
Now this is very default. The hard problem comes when:
A) We want to steal SB x BTN raisor. (3bet light? How? When? Why? Where?)
We want to Re-steal BB x SB raisor.
We want to re-steal BB x BTN raisor
When we are out of position, versus a recreational player, it tends, most of the times, to be calling the 3bet steal and even Open Raise steal. Because the Fish is in position and it calls with a wide range, but even so with
a decent calling range. Which means, most of times, in my low experience at 2 NL and 5 NL, that when this hypothetical fish hits parts of his range it will be hard for it to leave, and thus almost impossible for Hero out of position (SB or BB) try to steal the pot postflop a lot.
And usually, not always, when a PASSIVE fish, with aggresion factor around 0 and 2 (for 500-1000 hands sample), decides to check-raise Flop/Turn/River it will show a better hand 9 out of 10 times. Because this kind of player likes to call a lot with his draws, his gutters, his top pairs with no kicker, his two pairs that he is in doubt because of the board texture and etc. Therefore, when this hypothetical Fish decides to be aggressive he has a 'good hand' in the perspective of the player line of thinking.
And if we try to steal blinds out of position versus very aggresive players, it is hard time. also. Versus Regulars, Tights and specially Nits I have no ideia how to do it. I believe it is not necessary at the micro stakes to be leveling against better players, so I avoid fancy plays or hard moves against Regulars. (And I play GTO against them but for your videos, Jarvis, I can see I am playing very wrong).
So professor, the question is very complicated and deep. Sorry for the long term text. I know it is boring but I cannot express such a heavy thought like that in a shallow manner.
Is there a frequency for defending the blinds at the micros? How to defend when we have no odds, for example BTN opens 3x, SB folds, we cannot call here at the micros with 50% range as the charts claims we have to do it. However, we also cannot be folding 70% of the blinds, 80%, or even 90% as I was making until now! I decided to stop folding too much from the blinds and the overall strategy when the rake is so high as 2 NL and 5 NL, is to be 3betting light a lot for steal, from the BB and SB specially, and rarely, very rarely we will be calling down, specially when we have amazing odds (for example we have to pay 1 to a pot of 10, so we can call almost with 100% range and 3bet light with 15% I guess? am I correct or am I being to 'fishy' and making default moves a lot?)
So, we must get crazy aggressive from the SB and BB and start 3betting light a ton? Or we defend more versus 3x raises in MWP (high variance spots mostly)? It is so complicated to me this matter, that I fear that I didn't ask anything I wanted. But I don't want to be boring and nerd out of proportion.
By the way, this is the link for Alex 'Assassinato' Fitzgeral video on how to defend the blinds: an Assassinato Joint:
http://excellingatnolimitholdem.com/blinddefense/
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
