OTB #052: When, How & Why to Adjust your Big Blind Defence Strategy

Many amateur poker players struggle to defend their Big Blind effectively.

As you progress through the tournament, your strategy and ranges need to change.

If you're still using cEV ranges for all stages of the tournament, you're costing yourself real $$$.

Today, I want to show you when, how and why to adjust your Big Blind defence strategy for 4 different stages of an MTT.

Let's dive in...

Minimise your losses

The Big Blind position is one where you'll inevitably lose chips, but minimising these losses can significantly impact your success in MTTs.

Understanding when and how to adjust your strategy in the Big Blind will give you a solid foundation to build a great postflop strategy.

And getting to the flop with the right ranges is so important in poker: it'll set you up to make great decisions postflop.

Tailoring your strategy

Many players adopt a one-size-fits-all strategy approach to defending their Big Blind.

They might call too liberally with weak hands that play poorly postflop or fold too often, allowing their late position opponents to run them over.

Others fail to adjust based on stack sizes, stage of the tournament, raise sizes, type of tournament and more, leading to suboptimal decisions.

Understanding the nuances of Big Blind defence and tailoring your strategy to the different situations that come up in MTTs is key to developing a winning strategy.

Solving this spot

It folds to the Button who has both you and the Small Blind covered and they raise to 2bb:

In a cEV world, the Button opens 45.9% of hands and when the SB folds, you should defend with almost 94% of hands.

You get to 3-bet jam almost all pairs and Ax hands together with KQ and a mixture of other hands:

Here are 4 specific spots where your Big Blind defence strategy will look very different:

1. The preflop raise size is bigger

This is simply a pot odds problem: a bigger raise size means worse odds preflop.

Of course you still need to think about how well your hand does at realising equity out of position, but the bigger your opponent raises, the more you should fold.

If the Button raises to pot (4.7bb) instead of 2bb, then they only get to open 31.4% of hands and you only get to VPIP about 30% of hands:

Worse odds and a tighter opening range means you have to fold a lot more.

2. You're on the direct money bubble

On the direct money bubble of the $109 SCOOP Main Event your risk premium against the opener is 17.8%, which is going to affect how many hands you get to play, and also how many hands the Button gets to open in the first place.

Despite the Button now getting to open 71.6% of hands (and jam 6% of hands), you can only VPIP 58.5%:

The worst suited hands now have to fold together with a lot of offsuit hands.

3. You're on the final table

Your risk premium on the final table of the SCOOP $109 Main Event is actually lower than it was on the direct bubble at 10.1%.

The Button now opens 51% of hands and you can play 55.4%.

The make up of the range is quite similar to the direct bubble, but remember that the Button is opening a tighter range now so despite having a lower risk premium against them, you have to defend slightly tighter:

4. You're playing in a PKO and you cover your opponent

When you cover your opponent in a PKO, you are incentivised to play a very wide range from the Big Blind.

Positive risk premiums lead you to have to play a lot tighter preflop when defending the Big Blind.

When you cover your opponent in a PKO and can therefore win their bounty, your risk premium against them is actually negative, which leads you to being able to defend a lot wider.

In this example, Villain on the Button has less about half a starting stack and a starting bounty towards the start of the Bounty Builder $109:

If it wasn't a PKO tournament, then the Button gets to open 49.3% of hands and you can defend almost 90% of hands from the Big Blind because your risk premium is just 0.7%:

As soon as we add bounties though, your risk premium drops to -9.2% so you get a huge discount preflop and can be less selective when it comes to choosing the hands you play.

In fact, you can actually play 100% of hands in this example, even though the Button is now opening a tighter range of 35.1% of hands:

You also now prefer to 3-bet jam rather than 3-bet if you do want to play aggressively.

Improving your edge

By implementing these 4 adjustments to your Big Blind defence, you'll improve your overall understanding of when, why and how to adjust your strategy.

Remember, poker is a game of small edges, and optimising your Big Blind defence is a crucial step in becoming a more successful tournament player.

That's it for this week.

See you next time.