Home » Home Game Poker » How do you increase the blinds?

How do you increase the blinds?

When you play in a home game atmosphere, is raising the blinds often a topic of conversation? If you play in a regular group, it’s probably not, but if you’re new to a group or playing at someone else’s house (and thus their rules), a different method to increasing the blinds can throw you off your game worse than a 102 degree fever. Let’s take a look at a few of the different ways the blinds can jump and the benefits and detriments to each one.

In my current “usual” game, the blinds are raised by a combination of things. Time and elimination. But before I talk about that, here’s a breakdown of three different ways to raise the blinds.

By time: This means at any given time interval (for small money tournaments it’s usually somewhere around 20 minutes), the blinds will either double or increase by the the amount of the original blind. The advantage, if you want to call it that, is that everyone knows exactly when the blinds are going up. Of course, they don’t rise mid-hand, not that it would matter at that point anyway. If you’re a Type A person who needs that organization to plan your method of attack, it’s a good thing. For those of us who tend to focus on things a little too far out of our reach, and let that cloud our current judgment, it’s not so great. The last thing I need to be doing while I’m trying to put my opponent on a range is fighting thoughts that the blinds go up in 3 minutes.

By # of hands: Not a method I’m a fan of, but some raise the blinds after 10, 20, 50 hands, etc… For those who think time between increases is too unreliable given how long some hands can take, they prefer the structure of # of hands. And while I can see their point, this can push the time between raises to extremes. I’ve seen it go more than an hour at the beginning of a tournament. That’s a long time to wait before the blinds go from 25/50 cents up to 50/$1.

By when a person is eliminated: This one is easy, when someone’s out, the blinds go up. It’s rarely used as the only method for raising the blinds, though, and as is the case in my regular game, it’s another layer combined with time.

Growing up, I was so used to playing 7-card with straight antes that a blind structure was so foreign to me to begin with, it didn’t matter how they increased. And as long as I’m clear how it’s going to work before the game starts, I can adjust.