How to Defend from the Big Blind

30 Dec 2024

Beginner

This material is for beginner players

Most players are way too tight when defending from the big blind. So let's compare GTO ranges and how the solver would defend from the BB. If you are pretty tight, only calling and 3-betting collectively less than 20% of the time against a raise, be sure to read the entire poker article.

One of the bigger leaks that newer poker players especially have is simply defending far too tight from the big blind. And GTO solvers have made this completely, completely obvious. If you're currently overfolding the big blind, this is the article you want to read in its entirety. Let's get into it!

So today we’re talking about the big blind, and really making sure that we're continuing often enough when facing a raise and having to defend from the big blind specifically. Now like I mentioned at the top: one of the most common leaks, especially for newer players, is simply being way too tight from the big blind. And it doesn't help that for a large chunk of online poker's existence, players have been actively encouraged to be tight from the big blind, fold often, don't defend 2-2 wide, don't put in a lot of hands in your out of position range. And to some extent that makes sense. 

So much so that if you look at the strategy that was coming out, say, before 2010, it was very common for players to suggest folding hands like K-Jo from the BB against a 3 BB open from the button. Players at the time would be quick to cite that you'd be out of position going postflop, and of course, K-Jo could easily be dominated by better hands in your opponent's open raising range. 

So let's actually look at a range together. This is coming from the Red Chip Poker app. This is looking at a 6-max situation where again, button open raises to 2.5x and we're in the big blind. And this is what the solver says we should be doing:

The three bets are in red, the calls are in blue. And notice that this overall is a 44% continuance range. That's what we're defending with. The other 56% of course is going to be folds, but that's a lot of continuance. And of course, while most players nowadays aren't really going to be making the mistake of folding King Jack even offsuit here, they're still going to be short of the required defending frequency by quite a margin.

Most players, and even you reading this, might not be anywhere near 44% defensive here. And if at this point you're looking at this and you're like: okay, that's cool what the GTO ranges are, but I don't play in a game that requires that, right? I play small live cash games or I play micro stakes online totally fair. 

So if the button is a weaker opponent, you should actually be continuing more than just 44% of the time. A lot of players do that inverse. Also on weaker opponents, they start continuing much tighter. That's actually almost certainly going to be wrong. 

Now with all that being said, there's of course a lot of nuance and many things to consider. But one of the biggest considerations that often gets massively overlooked is the size of the raise you're facing when defending from the big blind. A lot of players in general will assume that the size your opponent uses, assuming it's not overly large or anything, isn't going to make a big difference. 

But the truth of the matter is that once you slide that size, say from a min raise that you're facing from the big blind to let's just say 3x, all of a sudden you notice that there's some pretty big differences in the way that the solver would defend spots like this. 

So let's start by looking at the defense output when we're looking at a big blind defense against the button open raise:

And we're going to scale that RFI size all the way from two big blinds, so a min raise from the button, all the way up to three big blinds. And notice that when we're looking at, again, 2.25 big blinds and 2.5 big blinds, when we scale through those things, we notice the folding frequency changes pretty darn massively, right?

Against the min raise, we should be folding from the big blind 36% of the time, but against a three big blind open, all of a sudden that's almost two thirds. Now, interestingly, the three bet frequency is going to remain fairly similar across all the sizes. At two big blinds, we should be three betting at a 12% frequency, against a three big blind open, all of a sudden that's up to 14%, and then 13% between those two numbers for the different sizes, which means, of course, that if the folding is changing, that all the extra hands that are getting included when we're looking at the smaller open raise size from the button are going to be jammed into calls. 

Calling against the min raise from the big blind against a button min raise is 52% - over half of hands should be getting called here. Contrast that to the three big blind open, all of a sudden that's down to 19%. 

Now, we could just look at the big blind versus button, but steals are a little bit different than other situations. So let's say instead of it being the button open raising, we look at the low jack open raising, and again, still look at our defense from the big blind, assuming everyone folds to us. 

And if we keep those exact same RFI sizes in mind, again, ranging from the min raise up to a three big blind open, we notice that the folding frequency against the min raise is 60%, but the folding frequency against the three big blind is 82%, which is much higher than the two thirds that was coming when, again, it was the big blind versus button formation. 

We also noticed that the three bet frequency is going to be very similar, scaling between 5% and 6%, again, across all those sizes, which of course means that against the larger open raise size, we are calling significantly less versus against the min raise, 35% of hands are being called from the big blind against the low jack min raise. 

So just comparing these two formations overall, two major things should poke out:

1. Against the smaller raise sizes, we should definitely be folding a lot less and folding a lot more against the larger raise sizes, even though we're just talking about literally looking at the difference between a single big blind and raise size; 
2. Then the other thing is that three bet frequencies remain fairly static. So that continuance is going to be modified mostly through the calling ranges. 

In general, most players are pretty surprised with just how wide they're supposed to defend against min raises, even from earlier positions. So in the situation where it's big blind versus the under the gun opener, heroes should still be defending about 35% of the time against a min raise from under the gun. That's probably a lot wider than you ever would have thought!

Now, here's the thing: if you are brand new to poker and extremely green, you really don't have much of a clue on what the heck to do post flop. I understand playing tighter preflop from the big blind makes a lot of sense, keeps you out of a lot of trouble and keeps you from just absolutely hemorrhaging stacks post flop. I get it. Now, that being said, if you're reading this article, chances are you're not a pure beginner. So chances are, if you're playing way too tight from the big blind right this moment, you haven't updated the original strategy. You put in mind to keep yourself from hemorrhaging stacks post flop, which again, was to get much tighter from the big blind in the first place early on in your poker career. 

Makes sense, but at this point, it might be time to start updating that and defending more properly and getting away from being way too tight from the big blind. I assure you, it makes you a huge target for any opponent who's paying attention, who's just trying to steal your big blind relentlessly if you're constantly overfolding. Now, if post flop still makes you nervous in these spots or you're not really sure what you should be three betting from the big blind in these situations either, we would highly suggest checking out our poker coaches section.

Specialists of our website go through all sorts of spots just like this, and will provide you tons of advice for playing spots as the defender post flop, playing marginal situations, vulnerable spots, talking about GTO from a pre flop and post flop point of view.

If you want to get deeper in this and really prepare your strategy for handling this spot, both when you three bet and when you defend by calling, contact us right now! Hopefully this article helps you put some profitable modifications into your pre flop strategy from the big blind. As always, if you have any comments or questions, please do not hesitate to let us know. In the meantime, good luck out there and happy grinding!