Poker Game Tips

When you’re sitting in the big blind, it often seems harmless to call a small raise. This is especially true if you only have to call a 2X the big blind raise, and you’re holding a half-ways decent hand like K9, QT, J9, etc.

The main advantage to calling a small raise from the big blind is that you get to see the flop for cheap. For instance, if the blinds are $0.25/$0.50 and somebody makes a mini-$1 raise, the cost isn’t high to see some more cards. So the question becomes, “Why not pay this cheap price to see more cards?” The answer is that you could get trapped with top pair or middle pair after making this seemingly harmless call.

For example, let’s say that you call a 2.5X the big blind raise with Ks9c, and three other players are in the hand; the flop shows Kh-7h-7s. Now it’s nice that you flopped top pair here, but assuming the small blind has folded, you’ve also got to consider that you’re the first player to act with three others in the hand. What possible good can come out of this situation? Sure you could throw out a feeler bet here to see what other players do; however, you also have to contend with aggressive players who overplay flush draws, and the chance that someone has a set of 7′s.

The bottom line here is that you want to avoid calling bets with marginal hands just because you already have a blind on the table. Sure it’s tempting, but you could also get put in a difficult situation with the second best hand.