The other day I was reading Daniel Negreanu's blog.

He was writing about blowing off some steam and playing some hold em 'in the dark'. Here's was he had to say:

After that I decided to play in the dark. I informed everyone at the table that I was going to do the following:


1) Never look at my cards unless someone else bets 2) Raise the minimum every hand before the flop 3) Bet the minimum on EVERY street without looking


This sounds like suicide, but it's nowhere near as bad as you might think as a strategy. Several of the players were amazed with how well it appeared to work and we broke into a full scale strategy discussion about the merits of using the strategy.

So I decided to implement this strategy myself in some micro micro stakes no-limit on line. I plopped myself down at a 0.01/0.02 table and I too informed everyone what I was doing.

I placed a post-it note on my screen covering my hole cards and religeously stuck to my routine. Min raise pre-flop. Bet the minimum on the flop turn and river.

And on the occasion when someone would bet. I would look under the sticky note and see what I had. It would often shock me to see how good a holding was there.

An example. After being at it for a while I min raise and someone comes over the top with 7x the big blind. There is another caller. I look at my hole cards and see QQ. Not bad. I'm certainly getting decent pot odds to call (3.5:1 with 0.35 in the pot and 0.10 to call) with only two hands that could possibly have me beat before the flop comes down. So I go ahead and make the call.

The flop comes 56Q (rainbow) handing me the set.

I bet the minimum after the flop (because of the rules I was playing within) and got raised substantially by the original raiser. He may well have had me pre-flop with the agressive bet after the flop (or had a reasonable AQs). I call his raise and await the turn. I bet the blank and he fires back all-in. I call and win the hand as a 6 pairs the board on the river giving me a full house. The player mucked his hand, but as I said, I suspect he may have had KK, AA or AQ given the betting in the hand.

Now couple that hand with half a dozen or more hand where I'm firing at boards of complete rubbish and people fold around surrendering the modest pot. In all those events I had no idea what I was playing. I may have had aces or rags.

I may test this style of play a bit more and do some calculations on whether it could possibly be profitable in the long run. In the short run it did turn a tidy profit.

andre