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We've recently examined opening ranges for the early and mid positions, the Cutoff, the Button, and the Small Blind.
Now it's time to look at the cold calling strategy in the blinds, positions where you're almost guaranteed to lose money. As a result, your goal should be to lose as little as possible.
What's the math behind losing while in the blinds? Whenever you're in the Big Blind, you must put one big blind into the pot. Therefore, if you fold every hand preflop, you lose precisely 1 BB every time. While it might not look like a lot, it translates to a -100 BB/100 win rate, which is a catastrophic result. Thus, whenever you call a raise when in the Big Blind, your goal is to achieve a better win rate than folding would present.
This mechanism is similar when you're in the Small Blind, where your starting win rate (meaning you'd fold 100% hands) equals -50 BB/100. The similarities end there, however. While the GTO strategy assumes you should defend your big blind by calling often, we strongly recommend refraining from cold calling whenever you're in the Small Blind.
Why is cold calling in the Small Blind not a thing?
There are a few reasons for playing a 3-bet-or-fold strategy against a single raise when you're in the Small Blind.
The first one is that the Small Blind is the worst position to find yourself in postflop — you'll always be out of position, sometimes against multiple opponents, making all your decisions much harder.
The second is that you cap your range whenever you call a raise, and simultaneously, you "invite" the BB player to squeeze. When they do, the action reopens and the previous raiser can still re-raise, turning the chips you put into the pot into dead money. Even if the original raiser calls, allowing you to call as well, you'll end up playing a big, 3-bet pot out of position versus two players with (presumably) solid ranges.
Lastly, you should aim to inflate the pot preflop with your best hands. Additionally, whenever you decide to 3-bet, you lower the postflop stack-to-pot ratio, reducing your opponents' positional advantage since playing on a lower SPR is easier.
That's why, unless you're in an absurdly soft PLO game, you should refrain from cold calling in the Small Blind to avoid putting yourself in the complex multiway spots. Even if you sit at the unchallenging table, you should carefully choose your potential calling hands, as it will be easy for other players to punish you for playing too wide (it will happen accidentally, just because playing out of position against multiple opponents is rarely easy).
That’s how you should play your range in the Small Blind against the Button open.
As you can see, the GTO strategy at the lowest stakes almost does not include calling. For context, let's compare it to how drastically it changes when it's the Big Blind vs the Button.
Defending the Big Blind versus the Small Blind
To be a proficient poker player, you must defend your Big Blind correctly. Otherwise, you will like heaps of money. Most of the time, you'll be out of position when defending versus the open raise; the only situation when you are in position versus your opponent is playing against the Small Blind, and since it's less complex, we'll start with this scenario.
Firstly, let's characterize this spot. In the BB versus SB scenario:
- you are guaranteed to have the position throughout the whole hand
- assuming the 100 BB starting stack, the SPR on the flop equals 16.2 (97 BB effective stacks and 6 BB pot)
- assuming the low stakes rake, the Small Blind should play the raise/fold strategy, raising 37,4% of hands
- you, as the BB, should call 52% of hands and 3-bet 13% of your range.
Of course, your average opponent's tendencies will differ from what is theoretically correct. However, since you're in a position, realizing the EV of your hand, even if you don't adjust accordingly to your particular opponent, will be much easier than when defending BB out of position.
You can study the GTO poker strategy for this spot in PLO Genius, but if you'd like to have a broad idea of how your range should look, here's a quick rundown.
Against an SB raise as a BB player, you should:
- 3-bet all of your AA combos
- defend all of your KK and QQ combos, raising the best ones
- defend all double paired hands
- defend most of the connected hands (folding ones with deuce and/or tray)
- defend most of the connected pairs (fives and higher)
- defend almost any suited Ace
- fold trips and unconnected tri-suit hands
Playing the Big Blind against a Small Blind is relatively easy
That's why it is a good starting point for studying how to react versus the raises of your opponent. Visualizing your whole range is never easy in PLO, but since the BB versus SB is the only scenario in which you defend against a preflop raise AND are in position, even if you commit a mistake preflop, you'll have to make up for it on later streets.
The real difficulties start with defending the Big Blind against an in-position raise, and that's the topic we'll examine in our next entry!