Protecting Your Blinds in Poker Tournaments

Protecting your blinds in multi-table tournaments is a vital aspect of your poker strategy. However there is a dilemma involved. Always protecting your blinds will ensure you are trapped by an opponent at some point.

Conversely, if you never protect them and the chips you lose will become a major handicap in moving forward in the tournament. This article looks at when and how to protect your blinds in multi-table tournaments to ensure you have a profitable balance between the two extremes.

We start with a brief discussion about why blind protection is relatively more important in tournament poker than in cash game play. We then look at the various ways in which you can protect your blinds – and how not to do this! Finally we look at the important role that stack sizes play in protecting your blinds.

Blinds Protection

In cash game poker blinds are usually a very small proportion of your total stack – often 1% or even less. The fact that playing from the blinds means you will be out of position for the whole hand, combined with the small relative size of the blinds, means that protecting them is not a priority (though you’ll need to protect them sometimes).

In tournament poker the blinds start off as a small proportion of your stack but soon grow to 5%, 10% or even more. This makes protecting them relatively more important – especially since your opponents are more likely to want to steal your blinds to keep their stacks healthy during the mid to late stages.

There are 2 basic ways you can protect your blinds. You can either flat call a raise or re-raise over limpers (or raisers) who have acted before you. Each has its benefits and its problems. Flat calling will leave you out of position (first to act) on subsequent betting rounds.

Unless you hit the flop hard you will have to act before you have any information on your opponent’s hand strength. Raising is a better move in that you will be able to define your opponent’s hand strength based on their reaction to your bet. The down-side is that you will commit more chips to the pot before the flop.

Starting Early

In a poker tournament the best time to protect your blinds is early. This will ensure that the late position players do not see you as an easy target for steals. Putting an element of doubt in their mind while the blinds are small may well translate into less steals when the blinds get larger.

You will often move table in a poker tournament, in which case the benefit of early protection disappears. Now blind defense should rely on a mathematical approach. You need to judge the range of cards an opponent would raise your blind with - and also the range that they would call a re-raise with.

If this gap is large then you have an opportunity to re-steal by making a big raise. Sure, your opponent will sometimes turn up with a premium hand, the key point is that your re-raise will be profitable over time. The added benefit is that opponents are less likely to steal your blind in the future.

Passive Defense

The worst kind of blind defense is too passive. Many players will call a raise from the blinds only to check-fold on the flop. Weak aces are the worst kind of hand to do this with, you can hit the flop and still not know if you are behind a higher ace.

Your own stack size and the stack sizes of your opponents are a critical factor in blind defense. At one extreme, when your stack is very short you need to be aware of the pot-odds being offered. There may be circumstances where you are getting the correct odds to call with any-2 cards.

At the other extreme you have a giant stack, now anyone raising your blind should be given credit for a strong hand – they would not fight the big stack for no reason! There may also be times when you have a medium stack and should consider defending your blind less often. This is especially the case if it is easy for you to steal from medium stacked opponents sitting to your left.

To summarize, blind defense is critical to your poker tournament success. Raising to protect your blinds early will ensure that opponents do not see you as an easy target in the mid stages. Poker mathematics can be used to assess the gap between a ‘blind stealers’ raising range and the hands they might call a re-raise with. Stack sizes, both your own and those of your opponents, also play an important role.

If you'd like to know more about winning poker tournaments, check out our poker tournament strategy page.

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