Sit and Go Poker Strategy: Playing in the Small Blind

Playing poker while in the blinds is almost guaranteed to be a losing proposition, especially the small blind because you often have to turn down great odds while holding brutally weak hole cards. In sit and go tournaments, it’s critical that you don’t lose your cool over having to fold too much from the small blind, because what you are actually doing is making it as profitable as the unfortunate position can be.

If you are using a poker calculator like tournament indicator while playing sit and go tournaments, you will find that the odds display will show that to “fill up the small blind” are actually favorable to call almost any hand when there are multiple limpers. It’s fair to call in some of the spots, but most times you should still fold with the real bad Group 9 (or worse) Sklansky hands like J3os, 92os, or 84os. You should be looking for one, two or three gapped connectors, suited cards with an ace or face, and T5s for straight potential.

The advantage of calling with a wide variety of hands in a passive mode from the small blind is that your opponents will not be able to put you on a hand after the flop. So your AJos or your 68s can turn into monsters, but the successful strategy is to keep those hands very cheap to see pre-flop. Don’t get caught out of position against multiple players, with weak hole cards calling raises.

One of the biggest challenges in playing in the small blind is psychological, in that you may always feel you are being pushed around. That can be very frustrating, but that’s also what you should feel here because your position is always inferior after the flop. It’s like that age old office desk strategy during negotiations. The big guy behind the desk is always in a bigger, more expensive chair looking down on you. He too has “position”.

When playing the small blind in online NL hold'em tournaments, self control is a critical piece of your skill set, where you are constantly fighting the urge to fight back with a re-raise or “taking a stand” as they call it. Still, it is most prudent, especially in the lower levels to be more tight and passive in the early stages, and simply wait for the chips to come to you. Given time and patience, the aggressive players are often too aggressive and you will eventually win bigger pots by letting them give you chips, rather than starting little fights over small pots, in the early blind stages.

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Marty Smith has a free sit and go strategy series on video just for signing up. He also rates and reviews all the online poker odds calculators using video so you can see them in use before you decide which one is right for you.