Hella Hold'em

Lucky readers: today I share with you my "duh!" moment of the day.

Game: limit hold'em
Venue: online
Scenario: you are in the small blind and action has folded around to you

Tip: RAISE!

OK... so I've always kept in mind the strategy of raising when you're the BIG blind in this situation (as you'll have position on the small blind throughout the hand), but here's the thing with playing online... when multi-tabling, often people check their starting cards in the big blind and hit the check/fold button, thinking, "I'll see a flop if the pot is unraised, but it's not good enough of a hand to call a raise." I never thought much past that when I'm in the big blind. But today, I realized that since so many people click that check/fold button and shift their attention to their other table, a raise from the small blind triggers that insta-fold. If the big blind player isn't watching the table and uses thost auto-action checkboxes, you win.

I know. It's so obvious. I've now stopped using that auto-act check/fold button on hands that I might like to play heads-up. I still use it for hands I won't play no matter what, but otherwise I'll wait to act in turn - just in case action folds around to the small blind.

I had a fantastic 40 minutes at 3/6 today, nearly tripling my money. I'm wearing some lucky 4-leaf clover earrings that my mom got me from Ireland, and they've been granting me crazy luck! First my win Friday night, then a decent profit online last night, and today a SWEET win! I'm heading over to the Diamond game in a little bit... let's hope my luck continues! Mama needs a new couch! :)