Poker Blinds Explained: Small Blind and Big Blind

Definition

Blinds are forced bets that the two players to the left of the dealer button must post before any cards are dealt, seeding the pot so there's always something worth playing for.

In Detail

Blinds come in two sizes and sit right next to each other at the table. The small blind is posted by whoever's directly left of the dealer button, and the big blind lands on the next seat over. It's standardly double the small blind, so a $1/$2 cash game runs a $1 small blind against a $2 big blind, and that number effectively sets the table's minimum bet. Without them, players could just fold hand after hand for free. Nothing would ever get contested. Blinds exist to punish that, forcing two people into the pot every single hand whether they like their cards or not. The button moves one seat clockwise after every hand, and the blinds move with it. That way the obligation to post rotates evenly around the table instead of sticking to the same two players all night. Hold'em and Omaha both use this setup. Seven-card stud doesn't. It forces betting through an ante and a bring-in instead, with no blinds in sight. Cash games and tournaments treat blinds very differently once play is underway. At a cash table, the blind sizes stay fixed for as long as that stake level runs. A $2/$5 game stays $2/$5 whether you sit down at 6pm or 2am. Tournaments do the opposite on purpose: blinds climb on a set schedule, maybe every 15 or 20 minutes, specifically to keep stacks under pressure and stop the event from stalling out over hours of cautious play. A stack that started at 100 big blinds can find itself under 20 an hour later purely from the blinds increasing, not from losing a single pot.

Examples

Posting in a $1/$2 cash game

At a live $1/$2 table, the player left of the button posts $1 as the small blind and the next player posts $2 as the big blind before anyone looks at their cards. Every other player at the table can now either call the $2, raise above it, or fold, but those two forced bets are already live in the pot regardless of what they hold.

Blind pressure in a tournament

A player starts a tournament with 20,000 chips when blinds are 100/200, giving them 100 big blinds of room to play patiently. Ninety minutes later the blinds have climbed to 1,000/2,000 on the published schedule. That same 20,000-chip stack, if it hasn't grown, is now only 10 big blinds deep, forcing much more aggressive shove-or-fold decisions than the player faced at the start.

Related Terms

All-InPoker

Going all-in means betting or calling with every remaining chip in a player's stack, committing them to the maximum they can risk on that hand.

Pot OddsPoker

Pot odds are the ratio between the current size of the pot and the cost of calling a bet, used to judge whether chasing a drawing hand is worth the price.