Does Shorthanded Play Affect Blinds Defense?

Blinds stealing and blinds defense. What hands should I steal with and defend with? Should I steal and defend more when shorthanded? What factors affect whether or not I try a blinds steal or defend my blinds? These questions are extremely common. I am asked them in many forms. Unfortunately, a complete answer could fill a book, and it’s not a book that I’m particularly inclined to write.

So, instead, I’ll answer a single question here from Jim, one of my readers: I have a question, Ed, concerning full-ring and shorthanded blinds defense. Do the requirements for blinds steals/defenses change at all between the two games?

The short answer is that the requirements do, and don’t, change. The short answer is never very informative, is it? How’s this: They don’t change from a theoretical perspective, and they do change from a practical perspective. It’s not a 100 percent accurate answer, but it’s close enough. Here’s what I mean:

Everyone folds to someone who’s one off the button. She raises. Everyone folds to you in the big blind. You have the K 9. Should you call?

Well, I don’t know if you should call or not. After all, we don’t even know yet if the game is limit or no-limit. But that’s not my point with this example. My point is this: Do you need to know how shorthanded the game is to answer the question? From a theoretical standpoint, no, you don’t.

The only difference theoretically between a 10-handed game that gets to this situation and a six-handed game is how many people have folded up front. Once people fold, they’re irrelevant. When I say, “Everyone folds to someone who’s one off the button,” all of the folders are irrelevant. Who cares if there were two of them or six? It doesn’t matter. They’re out of the hand. They’re out of the picture. They don’t change your play one iota.

That’s the theoretical answer. In practical terms, however, things do change. Why? Because it’s all about range.

The range of hands with which you should defend your blinds depends most on the range of hands with which your opponents will try to steal your blinds. If they “steal” only with big pocket pairs and A-K, you shouldn’t defend very often at all. If they steal anytime they get the opportunity, you should defend with a lot of hands. Whether you defend or not depends principally on the strength of the hand you expect to be facing.

That’s the bottom line, and it will always be true, whether you’re 10-handed or four-handed, whether you’re playing limit or no-limit — or even when you’re playing triple-draw deuce-to-seven Mississippi follow-the-queen badugi.

Likewise, the hands with which you should try to steal depend on the range of hands with which you expect your opponents in the blinds to defend. If they’ll defend with relatively few hands, you should steal with a lot of hands. If they’ll defend with a lot of hands, you should “steal” with few hands, but raise a lot of hands for value.

It’s all about hand ranges.

So, what does that have to do with changing your standards between full-ring and shorthanded games? While theoretically there’s no reason to adjust your ranges, practically speaking, your opponents will adjust. Here’s why:

In 10-handed games, you can virtually ignore the whole blinds stealing and defending thing and still make money. If someone tries to steal your blind, just give it to him (without a good hand). And you never try to steal someone else’s blind. It’s far from the best way to play, but in a 10-handed game, you can get away with it. Relatively few hands even end up in a blinds-stealing situation, as people are often playing from early and middle positions.

Lots of people who play 10-handed like this characteristic of their game. They like the fact that they never really have to deal with blinds stealing and defending. They aren’t comfortable playing the marginal hands that you sometimes get stuck with in these situations. So, they don’t. When everyone folds to them on the button, they don’t steal. And when the button opens, they don’t defend their blinds.

People who play shorthanded tend to be the opposite. They seek out situations for blinds stealing and defending, as they come up far more often in shorthanded games. These players enjoy stealing blinds and defending them, and they do it far more often.

Furthermore, when players from 10-handed games wander into a shorthanded game, many come armed with the vague notion that they have to “defend more.” Usually, the logic goes like this: “The blinds come around a lot more often, so each hand costs a lot more to play. If I keep playing tight, I’ll just get blinded out, so I need to start playing a lot more hands to compensate.”

That “logic” is severely flawed. As I demonstrated above, if everyone folds to the player one off the button, who raises, it doesn’t matter whether the game is 10-handed or six-handed. The hands you play depend only on the hand range of that opponent, not on how fast the blinds “come around.”

The flaw in the logic is in looking at the blinds as a “price” that you “pay.” You don’t “pay” blinds, as they aren’t dead money. They are live bets. And these live bets are worth relatively a lot more against just a few players than against a full table of players. So, you do make many more blinds bets in a shorthanded game, but each of these bets has commensurately more value in the shorthanded game, so the total “price” balances out.

Therefore, while theoretically you need make no adjustment between 10-handed and six-handed games, in practice, you’ll find that your opponents play more aggressively in shorthanded games. You don’t have to adjust to the different number of opponents dealt in, but you do have to adjust to the different hand ranges that they play.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.