Hey guys. Over the last year or so ive spent a lot of time thinking about my play from the blinds. I thought that i was losing way too much from these positions and made a concerted effort, with some others (friends and students), to improve.


The first task was trying to figure out what was a good goal to set. With all the info about poker out here, there really isnt a ton of discussion about what qualifies as a good or successful winrate from the blinds. The little I was able to find online combined with what what I came up with by looking at quite a few players different winrates is below (as i talked about in my last video):


From the SB: -15bb/100
From the BB: -30bb/100


Getting better in our blind play is super-duper important. Firstly, most of us that frequent sites like 2p2 or CR are going to be long term winners from the other 4 non-blind positions. Thats the easy part. However when we subtract our losses from the blinds many people become breakeven or losing players overall. Thus the ability to curtail losses from the blinds is essential to being a long term winner.


The second task was identifying where the leaks were and then fixing them. (I.e. the hard part) I noticed that many people dont have set plans or ranges for blind vs blind play. This is the next area I wanted to concentrate on. In my large database, right around 33% of the time when I was in the SB it folded to me. 1 out of 3 times! That sounds like a lot of free money to fight over between 2 players. So damn, if we can be somewhat more competent in this area we can have access to a lot of nearly free money. I played with tons of ranges in HEM to see what was working, and what wasn't. I thought about what player types tended to fold and which ones didnt and adjusted some for that.


Of course we also have to think about our BvB play when it folds to the SB and we are in the BB. Many players dont play well in this spot. Many defend too wide, or not wide enough. The keys I found to BB play here is to plan the hand based on villain tendencies, the strength of my hand, and the flopability of my hand. Many SB's dont have a plan past C-Betting the flop, so I took into account what hands I should continue with by floating and which ones to raise with based on that knowledge.

Then it comes down to which hands to 3 bet vs people outside the blinds, which hands can be profitable to flat with vs. a late position raise (hint: not that many and for most people not as many as you think), and making some subtle changes to my play in limped pots from the blinds.

The end result is I feel like I have a much better understanding of what I should be doing from the blinds, and I feel much more confident in my plan for most hands. Steady and ongoing work though will be required in order to maintain this, of course!

So with all that said, here's my recent results, shown by positional winrates. This screenshot is of my last 120k hands of 25nl 6 max.





As you can see above, I'm incredibly happy with my SB results, and pretty darn happy with my BB results. If i can continue with this pace of winrate from the blinds, needless to say, I'd be ecstatic. More updates soon guys.