On a Saturday night at a local casino, I was playing in an atypical 1/2 NL game. About half the table was comprised of legitimately above-average players: they were relatively tight, rarely limped into a pot, were aggressive in position, and were decent hand readers. The remaining players were largely rocks, playing very few hands, and playing those hands practically face up because of their betting patterns.
Given the table conditions, it was somewhat difficult to win a big pot. No one was about to go broke with TPTK, no one was calling down value bets with middle pairs, and no one was making ridiculously small bets into good sized pots that granted the odds -- implied or otherwise -- to pursue a draw. In short, the game was fairly boring, with lots of small pots broken up by the occasional cooler hands.
After about 5 hours of this, three of the players decided to make the game fun. They started to play their hands blind. All three entered every pot blind, and they played every street blind until a "non-blind" player made a significant bet or raise. Here are some of the things they did:
- straddle every opportunity
- post a blind raise pre-flop
- bet post-flop streets blindly, sometimes big, sometimes small
- raise one of the other "blind" players' post-flop bets
What adjustments would you make in this game?
Play wider?
Play more hands in position?
Raise blind bets in position more often?
Bluff in position more often?
Float made hands more often or bet/raise them, causing the blind players to check their cards?
Call unmade hands more often with weak draws (e.g., let's say 6 players see a limped pot for $2 each; the flop comes out 8 7 2 rainbow; one of the blind players bets $10 on the flop; the other blind players call; and you hold a hand like KJ on the button)? What do you do when the turn bricks and the same action happens with $20 bets on the turn?
I'm curious to see what adjustments people would make when a casino game turns into a low-stakes home game.
