Playing from the small and big blind is one of the most difficult skills to master in any form of online Texas Holdem, particularly in cash games. The fact you will almost always have a positional disadvantage over your opponents and you having to pay a forced bet before receiving your hole cards means even the very best players will lose money from the blinds. With this in mind you should be trying to minimise your losses from the blinds, not maximise your profits.

 

One of the biggest mistakes poker players make is to play too many hands from the blinds and in particular hands that are easily dominated such as King-ten and raggedy aces. Players rightly think about the increased pot odds they are being offered but fail to realise their implied pot odd are less and their reverse implied pot odds are simply dreadful. Imagine you call a raise in the big blind with Ace-six of diamond and the flop comes down Ac-Td-3s, you are in a tricky spot. Is your ace with an almost non-existant kicker ever good here? It could cost you a lot of money to find out.

 

If you play poker online then you will play out of the blinds more often than a live game due to the speed of the action and the fact you can play more than one table at once. What hands you play from the blinds should be dependant on the type of players in the hand and their position in relation to the button.

 

When a tight player opens with a raise from early position you should be folding almost every single hand when in the blinds and the hands that you should be playing should almost always be re-raised to retake the initiative in the hand. Aces and kings are instant re-raises but you could make the call with most pairs, hoping to flop a set. Suited connectors should usually be folded except when there has been at least one other caller before you. Fold ace-rag and king-rag as quickly as you were dealt them.

 

If a loose player has raised or the raiser is weak then you can open your range a little more. You should still fold the majority of aces and kings but you can now profitably call with all pairs and you should be three-betting tens or higher. If the raise comes from one of the late positions from any player type you should be willing to re-raise with pairs and suited connectors to take the pot down preflop, especially if the player in question is a habitual blind stealer.

 

Finally, if there is no raise before you you can raise from the blinds and hope to take the pot down preflop. This is especially true if the limper is weak and has folded to raises from other players in the past. If the action folds around to you in the small blind you should rarely flat call despite being offered 3/1 odds on doing so. This is because even the weakest of players will often raise a limper in the small blind, leaving you with a decision to call a large bet out of position or fold after investing more into the pot. Basically you should be folding and raising from the small blind.