To Defend or Give Up? Playing Junky Hands from the Big Blind
Today I want to share a hand I recently played in a tournament at the Borgata in Atlantic City, this one presenting a situation where I was short-stacked and in the big blind and had to make a decision about defending my BB against a raise despite being dealt a marginal starting hand.
I had a little less than 40,000 to start the hand, meaning that with the blinds at 2,000/4,000 with a 400 ante I had about a 10BB stack. A younger, loose-aggressive player raised to 8,000 from middle position and it folded to me in the big blind with Q?6?.
The question here is whether or not we can profitably defend with a call with such a hand. In the video below I talk about my reasoning why I decided that yes, it was okay to call in this spot with my speculative holding.
I end up flopping a flush draw, and thus gave myself more decisions while playing from out of position with my quickly-dwindling stack. Take a look:
In this spot, would you have defended your big blind with a junky hand? Then with the flush draw on the flop would you have check-called? Or check-raised all in? Short-stacked poker is fun!
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,300,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
