Strategies to Succeed at Online Poker: Expert Advice for Novice Players
Get ready to disrupt your opponents' plans with these clever tactics meant to leverage your position in the big blind. This guide shows you how to amp up your preflop play and defend more effectively, ensuring your blinds are a headache for your rivals.
Trouncing Your Opponents in the Big Blind
Tackling the big blind consistently isn't a breeze, even for ace poker players. The disadvantage in position is too potent to ignore, even for the best of the best. However, there are several tips and tricks you can employ to mitigate losses and make opponents question their relentless stealing attempts.
These strategies, combined with the features offered by Jurojin Poker, will help you generate more wins and potentially boost your win rate. We'll discuss table position, stack depth, aggression, and much more to help you become a force to be reckoned with. Here we go!
Making Your Opponents Think Twice Before Raising Your Big Blind
Understanding position power is crucial for online poker beginners. They grasp the importance of tight play in earlier positions and becoming looser as they approach the button. According to Jurojin Poker's range builder, a typical opening range from under the gun is 12.7%, which increases to 43.7% on the button.
This implies the button will attempt to steal the blinds almost half the time the action folds to them, often with weaker holdings like king-nine offsuit, queen-three suited, or ten-six suited. Keep this in mind when applying these tips to defend your big blind.
If you allow your opponents free rein to help themselves to your blinds without resistance, you become an easy target. Similarly, playing only premium hands will lead to infrequent action and difficulty extracting value from those strong hands. That's why we'll start with our first tip.
Tip 1 - Loosen Up and Get Aggressive: Improving Your Preflop Play
Sound foundations are key to establishing your poker knowledge, and preflop strategy is where it all begins. Many mistakes made by online poker beginners occur preflop, and subsequent streets exacerbate those errors.
Many beginners learn the phrase "tight is right" and cling to it tightly. This results in playing an overly tight range of hands, which works fine against unsophisticated foes but falls short against seasoned grinders.
As I've pointed out earlier, Juorjin Poker's range builder suggests you should open-raise from the button with 43.7% of your hands. All pairs and suited connectors are part of that range, and so are nine-six suited, jack-five suited, and all aces, as well as suited kings and queens. Believe it or not, beginners should open-raise with queen-deuce suited!
The wide-ranging button should be opening so frequently that you can afford to defend your big blind more frequently; don't forget that you've already posted the big blind and have chips in the pot.
Jurojin Poker advises playing 38.6% of your hands from the big blind when facing a button opening raise, with hands like pocket tens through aces, ace-jack suited or better, and ace-queen offsuit or better. You should also call with many hands that the button opens with, including king-seven suited, jack-four suited, and even lowly holdings like seven-four suited and other suited baby connectors and two-gappers.
It's not only about playing more hands but also playing them with more aggression. By not betting and raising, you can only win the hand by having the best hand at showdown. Boosting aggression allows you to force opponents to fold and build larger pots when you have the goods.
Tip 2 - Defend With a Short Stack
Being short-stacked during a tournament is inevitable, and while no one enjoys it, understanding how to defend your big blind with a short stack can be beneficial. With limited chips, you can realize the full equity of your weaker hands.
Defending with king-nine with a deep stack means you're unlikely to see all five community cards. However, with a short stack, you could call, make a pair, hit a draw, and force your opponent into an all-in situation, allowing you to see the entire board.
You may find that opponents continuation bet less when you have a short stack because they're concerned about getting jammed all-in, giving you extra opportunities to see turn cards for free.
Tip 3 - Three-Bet Strong Suited Connectors
Suited connectors make excellent hands for three-bet bluffing from the big blind. Three-betting with offsuit Broadway hands can be tricky postflop, leading amateurs into complex decisions that may leave them uncertain of the best play.
By three-betting with hands like eight-seven suited, you can be aggressive postflop, continuing your bluffs on draws.
Tip 4 - Check-Raise Against Flop C-Bets
Check-raising is a powerful play in poker and one that you should use more – especially against small continuation bets. Suppose a late position player raises, you call in the big blind, and check the flop. The Flop comes A♦6♣7♥**, and the initial raiser makes a small continuation bet.
Small continuation bets often represent a wide range of hands, with seasoned players making a small c-bet on the flop with their entire range. By check-raising with hands like top pair with a decent kicker, two-pair, or even draws, you can extract value by inducing your opponent to fold. If they do call, you can reassess the situation on the turn, assigning a tighter range of hands to your opponent.
Getting the Best Poker HUD
Tip 5 - Selective Defense Against Low C-Bet Frequency
If you notice an opponent frequently raises preflop but rarely fires a continuation bet, you should defend your big blind more frequently against them. Most pros suggest a c-betting frequency of around 75-80%, with anything less considered low. If an opponent only c-bets 50% of the time, that's extremely low.
You can defend more liberally because your opponent is less likely to make a continuation bet and put you under pressure, allowing you to see more turns and improve your hand. On the flip side, an opponent who c-bets aggressively can give you headaches. You can either tighten your defending range so you are defending with stronger hands, or check-raise more, as they are likely c-betting their entire range.
Tip 6 - Be Selective When Probing With Strong Hands
Probe betting has its uses, but it should be deployed cautiously to avoid overuse. Probe betting refers to when you bet out of position after a preflop aggressor fails to make a continuation bet on the flop. For example, the button raises, you call in the big blind, and check the flop. The button checks behind, and you lead out on the turn. Your lead is a probe bet.
Many players will make a probe bet 80 %+ of the time they have top pair or another strong hand, which may seem logical, but it leads to a weak-looking checking range that opens the door for opponents to bluff. Instead, consider check-raising some of your stronger hands, which keeps opponents guessing and forces them to make mistakes.
Tip 7 - Engage in Pots With Recreational Players
It's obvious that you'll have a better chance of winning more chips and money by playing against players who are less skilled. Many recreational players exhibit certain tendencies that you can exploit once identified. For example, they may only continuation-bet if they have a massive hand, they may have a tight opening range, or they may c-bet 100% of the time.
If you identify a player you think is weaker than you and has exploitable tendencies, consider widening your big blind defending range to get involved in more pots with them. The more mistakes they make, the more likely it is you will help yourself to their chips!
Bonus: Using Jurojin's Free Online Poker Range Builder
Knowing what hands are optimal for defending your big blind used to mean trial and error through thousands, if not millions, of hands. But thanks to Jurojin Poker's free poker range builder, you can quickly and easily pinpoint your best defensive hands, allowing you to play like a pro.
While Jurojin Poker's range builder is free to use, it is comprehensive, offering presets such as opening ranges for all positions, ranges for acting after another player has opened, a section for defending the small and big blind, and even four-bet ranges for when pots get heated.
Conclusion: Defending the Big Blind – To Always Defend or Not?
It might seem as though this guide suggests always defending your big blind, but that's not entirely accurate. You should defend your big blind more frequently than you do now, but it isn't wise to begin defending it with any two cards against every steal attempt.
Consider where the opening raise is coming from, the effective stack size, the opponent's postflop tendencies, and the type of player they are. By using Jurojin Poker's free range builder tool, you can quickly and effortlessly refine your preflop ranges, effectively defeating your big blind woes.
Matthew Pitt hails from Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, and has worked in poker since 2008, writing for PokerNews since 2010. In September 2010, he became the editor of PokerNews. Matthew stepped down from live reporting duties in 2015, focusing on his role as Senior Editor for the PokerNews.
In the world of poker, understanding position power is crucial for online poker beginners, especially when it comes to the big blind. Here, we explore strategies to defend your big blind effectively, such as loosening up and getting aggressive with your preflop play (Tip 1), realizing the full equity of your weaker hands with a short stack (Tip 2), three-betting strong suited connectors (Tip 3), check-raising against flop c-bets (Tip 4), being selective when defending against low c-bet frequency (Tip 5), being selective when probing with strong hands (Tip 6), engaging in pots with recreational players (Tip 7), and leveraging Jurojin Poker's free online poker range builder for optimizing your defensive hands (Bonus). By employing these tips, you can make your opponents think twice before attempting to steal your big blind and potentially boost your win rate in casino-games like poker. Stay tuned for more detailed news and insights on casino-and-gambling, as we continue to explore the world of poker.
