Hold'em uses two: a small blind and a big blind, posted by the two seats left of the button. They rotate with the button so the burden is shared.
Blinds exist to create something to play for. Without a forced bet there would be no incentive to enter a pot with anything but the best hand, and the game would not function.
They also mean every player is losing money by default. A large part of winning poker is recovering blinds from other people faster than you surrender your own, which is why stealing from late position matters so much.
Related terms in poker
- Pot odds — The price a call is getting, compared against how often it needs to win.
- Outs — The cards remaining that would improve your hand to a likely winner.
- Equity — Your share of the pot, meaning how often you win it if the hand plays to showdown.
- Implied odds — The money you expect to win later if your draw comes in, beyond what is in the pot now.
- Position — Where you act in the betting order, and the largest structural edge in poker.
- Button — The dealer position, which acts last on every postflop street.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.