Poker – chopping the blinds I
In poker games played with blind bets, sometimes a situation may arise that even before the flop round has taken place all the participating players end up folding their hands unable to take any other action considering the blind bet size. In this case, the players who paid the blinds are allowed to remove their wagers from the pot and the hand of play comes to an end. This is known as chopping the blinds. While this kind of play happens quite regularly in live action ring games of poker, in tournaments, the small blind player is not allowed to take his wager back which is forfeited if he decides to fold like the rest. In internet poker games, chopping the blinds is never applicable.
There are two main reasons why this situation comes into play. Many gamblers prefer multi-way pot games rather than one-to-one play. So when they find most players are folding, they also fold their hands rather than make a call on the big blind. Another consideration by players is economic where if chopping the blinds happen where a large pot is impossible to build up, it saves the player who paid the blinds from obligation to pay any rake for the given hand.
It has been observed that chopping the blinds happen more frequently in low limit poker games than in the high limit ones. There are three obvious causes for it. Firstly, tight play is the norm in high limit games and players are ready to fold to the blinds more often, a situation that would mean regular chopping and progress of the game gets hampered. Moreover, the high limit poker games do not involve many hands of play and finally, the rake collected by the house is such a small percentage of the pot that the economic reason behind chopping the blinds is not valid enough to use in this occasion.
