Figuring out the best big blind defense strategy is essential for your long-term success in Texas Hold’em. Even though you’ll always be losing money from small and big blind positions, the main goal is to bring that losing percentage as low as possible.
One way to achieve this is by 3-betting. When another player raises and you’re sitting in one of the blinds, a part of your defense strategy will be to come over the top to try and win the pot straight away or at least take over the betting lead.
In this article, we’ll cover the GTO 3-betting strategy from the small and big blind against early and late position opens, presuming the full-ring action and 100 big blind stacks.
Naturally, there is a pretty big gap between strategies against early opens, which usually represent value, and late-position ones, especially the button, which has a wide steal range.
When it comes to small and big blind ranges in the same situations, differences are very small, as we’ll be 3-betting with a very similar scope of hands from both positions.
3-Betting from the Blinds Facing an Early Position Open
At a full ring table, players opening from early positions (UTG and UTG+1) will have a very tight range. Because of this, our 3-betting strategy from the blinds is pretty straightforward, encompassing only our strongest poker hands and a tiny percentage of bluffs.
This is the only viable strategy, as a UTG opener will be weighted heavily toward the top of the range, which forces us to play a pretty snug and straightforward strategy. There is simply not much else to do against an opening range that consists of just 10% of hands:
Small Blind Strategy vs Early Positions
Playing from a small blind and facing an early position open, we are only 3-betting around 4% of all hands, as shown below:
Our 3-betting range is weighted heavily towards value, encompassing hands like:
- Strongest pocket pairs: AA through JJ
- AKs and AKo
- AQs about half the time
- A5s and A4s as good bluff candidates
- A few suited connectors at a very low frequency
As you can see, even a hand as strong as pocket queens doesn’t 3-bet 100% of the time facing a UTG open, and AQs 3-bets only about half the time.
Big Blind Strategy vs Early Positions
Playing from the big blind, our 3-betting range against a UTG opener is only 3.2%. The fact that the big blind 3-bets less frequently than the small blind may come as a surprise, but this is because the big blind can call much more frequently.
The overall range isn’t all that different, but frequencies for some hands change quite a bit:
We are now much more content to just call with pocket pairs like QQ and JJ, only 3-betting these hands a small fraction of the time. Additionally, middling and small suited aces all become 3-bet candidates at around 10% – 20% overall.
All in all, the main takeaway here is that there is no need to get particularly creative with your 3-bets when facing an early position open. Stick to your strongest hands and add an occasional bluff with hands that have the potential to hit the flop hard, and you’ll be fine.
3-Betting from the Blinds Facing a Late Position Open
While players in early positions usually raise for value and with their strongest hands, late-position opponents will attack the blinds with a variety of hands when the action folds to them. This is especially true for the button, which is the prime steal position, raising with 40% of the entire range:
Against such a wide open, you can have a much more aggressive defense strategy from both blind positions.
Small Blind Strategy for 3-Betting vs. Late Position
Playing from the small blind, you should be attacking a button open with just over 13% of your entire range, which is a huge increase compared to the measly 3% – 4% against early-position openers.
As you can see, there is a variety of hands that we can use a 3-bet in these spots:
- All of our strongest aces (down to AJo and A9s)
- Pocket pairs down to 77 and even 66 about a third of the time
- Middling and small suited aces (specifically A8s, A7s, A5s, and A4s)
- Strong broadway combos
- Strongest suited connectors like T9s, T8s, JTs, and J9s
Knowing the late position opens with almost half of their hands, we can 3-bet much wider and expect to win the pot fairly often without any further resistance. Even when we get called, our range remains strong enough to play across a solid range of flop textures.
Big Blind Strategy for 3-Betting vs. Late Position
Our 3-betting range from the big blind is, once again, a bit lower than the small blind one, but the difference is almost negligible. Facing a button open in the big blind, we should be 3-betting with 12.5% of hands:
The most noticeable change is that some hands that were pure 3-bets from the small blinds we can sometimes call with playing from the big blind. The small blind doesn’t really have a calling range at all.
We make up for this difference by adding a few more suited connectors to our 3-betting range (i.e., hands like 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s, and even 54s).
Thus, our 3-betting range from the big blind is a bit more polarized (consisting more of value hands and bluffs), while the small blind strategy is more linear, where we 3-bet hands that are strong enough and just fold the rest.
As we move from early positions to late seats, the ranges also change accordingly. Here is a quick summary of hands we will be defending from all positions when sitting in the small blind:
- SB vs – UTG – 3.9% 3-bets and 1.7% calls
- SB vs – URG + 1 – 4.4% 3-bets and 1.7% calls
- SB vs – UTG + 2 – 5% 3-bets and 2.3% calls
- SB vs – Lojack – 6.1% 3-bets and 1.7% calls
- SB vs – Hijack – 7.8% 3-bets and 0.6% calls
- SB vs Cutoff – 9.9% 3-bets and 0.4% calls
- SB vs Button – 13.2% 3-bets and 1.1% calls
And here is a similar list for the big blind:
- BB vs – UTG – 3.2% 3-bets and 13.8% calls
- BB vs – URG + 1 – 3.4% 3-bets and 14.6% calls
- BB vs – UTG + 2 – 4.5% 3-bets and 15.7% calls
- BB vs – Lojack – 5.4% 3-bets and 17.1% calls
- BB vs – Hijack – 6.9% 3-bets and 18.6% calls
- BB vs Cutoff – 8.8% 3-bets and 21% calls
- BB vs Button – 12.7% 3-bets and 27% calls
If you follow these ranges, you will put your opponents in many hard spots and will be able to take advantage of their mistakes. To see the actual hands in each of these groups, go to our preflop charts app and play around.
