Playing the blinds and the effect of the rake

How do you think money is made in online poker? By winning pots, right? That is the most widely spread conception on what a winning poker player looks like. Wining pots left and right and and beating pretty much everything opponents can throw at him with an elegant combination of skill and luck.

The reality is far uglier than that – as it usually happens. What would you say if I told you that – especially in fixed limit poker – money is not made by wining pots at the showdown at all. There is no such thing there as a glamorous knight in shining armor dragging everyone around in the dirt, rather, it;s all about grueling battle over something many rookies consider insignificant: the blinds. That's right. Blinds are the catalyst of poker in general and they're the very essence of fixed limit poker.

Winning poker players usually aim to win one big bet every hour. In reality it often happens that they win the equivalent of one big bet over the course of several hours. Do you have an idea where that money comes from? That's right, the blinds. You see, during that time there are many big pots won and lost, but at the end of the day, a winning player will still walk away with the equivalent of one such big bet. So what exactly do you have to do in order to become that winning player? You have to play strong from the blinds.

What exactly does “playing strong from the blinds” mean anyway? Defending the blinds is part of the equation. Well actually you're not defending the blind itself but rather your equity in the pot, that you were forced to put there. Being in the blind(s) puts you in a strategically better position compared to your opponents. By virtue of the money you were forced to concede, it will now cost you less to call a raiser than it costs the other guys around the table. This is one of the driving forces behind blinds-defense. The other one is the simple fact that you have more reasons than anyone else around the table to win that hand. When defending the blinds do not generate unrealistic expectations. Chasing after blinds on nothing but some low rags, will certainly have you lose even more than you would have lost by letting go of the blind.

You have to accept the fact that everyone loses when in the blinds. The difference between good players and lousy ones comes down to how much they lose. Good players lose less. The money that is won on the blinds is not won when the player in question is in one of the blinds positions. The second part of successful blinds play is about attacking the blinds. This is where you can make some money. Since everyone loses in the blinds it is your task to take advantage of that fact and cash in on the money that has to go somewhere. Don't let others steal it from under your nose and work your angle over and over.

Remember, the blinds are there to create action. You are there to profit from the action they create. The best way to do that is the one described above. Another important thong many rookies fail to take into account when they build up their strategic approach is the influence of the rake on your winnings. The rake is the small percentage taken off every pot before it's awarded to the winner of the hand. Even though it seems insignificant, it'll put a constant leak into your system that will produce visible (negative) results over time. Don't think that if you lose a hand it's not you who's paying the rake, either. The pot is a separate entity, it doesn't belong to any one player when the rake is collected from it. If you had equity in it, you're paying part of the rake just as well as everyone who's had equity. That means that the rake is indeed something that you pay all the time win or lose.

The only way to dampen the impact the rake will have on your game is rakeback. When you sign up for a rakeback offer you'll get around 30% of the rake you pay back, and this way you'll take something out of the edge rake represents. Remember, in online poker it's mostly the systematically exploited small edges that make the difference.