Attacking the Blinds in Six

Attacking the blinds in six-max limit hold’em

The play in and around the blinds is of paramount importance in six max limit hold’em! This is for the express reason being that not only are you paying more to see the cards per round but the way that the game is designed makes aggression a pivotal part of the game.

In fact if you are not aggressive in six max play then the chances are that you will simply not win at this form of poker full stop. But there is a big difference between being aggressive and being aggressive in the correct and proper way. In fact I would say that the proper title for six max games would not be tight aggressive or even loose aggressive but tight-very aggressive.

Being tight-aggressive means different things to different people but a tight-aggressive player in full-ring is not the same as a tight-aggressive player at six max! The levels of VPIP (voluntary put money into the pot) will be drastically different between full-ring and six max.

Usually when I played six max limit hold’em, I would often be the tightest player on the table with regards to VPIP but yet my levels of aggression once I entered the pot would be higher than anyone else.

In limit play and especially six max play then if you come into the pot then more often than not you need to come in with all guns blazing and that means raising and re-raising. There are exceptions like if you are in the big blind or the pot is multi-way then limping and calling is fine.

But if you want to play and the hand has been folded around to you then you raise as you simply cannot go wrong with a raise. Raising allows you to fold out the small blind and create dead money that can make most of your hands profitable even when the big blind has a better hand than you do.

It is the same if you want to play and there has already been a raise, if it is folded around to the cut-off and they raise and you see the Q-J on the button then if you play this hand, you must re-raise. Even if your hand is inferior to the cut-off, you still have several advantages. You have position, you have the initiative and you may have created dead money from the blinds.

All of this contributes to making the play viable. In fact even if you knew that your opponent had a stronger hand than yours, if you could also be certain that if you re-raised that the blinds would both fold then you would still be correct to re-raise in many instances.