Stealing in Poker Tournament Play

To be a successful tournament player you need to learn how to steal pots from your opponents in order to increase your chip stacks.  There are moments at every table, where the opportunity to steal presents itself and a good poker player will become adapt at picking the best spots to steal. As the blinds and antes go up in a tournament, you need to keep increasing your chip stack in order to prevent yourself from getting short-stacked. Obviously if you are on a lucky streak you can increase your chip stack by just winning a big hand against another player who may also have a hand.  But that doesn’t happen too often and the blinds and antes don’t wait for you to get a hand against hand situation, so that means that you’re going to have to steal to survive in a tournament.

As the blinds and antes keep going up, stealing allows you to buy time until you do get the lucky moment of having a big hand and winning a large pot.  Successful players certainly understand this concept, and more importantly they recognize that there are plenty of spots in a tournament that you can steal pots with a very high percentage of hitting success.

The most obvious spots to steal in a tournament are at the bubbles.  The final table bubble is a great opportunity to steal because players want to say they made it to the final table. Of course any money bubble is also a good opportunity, because this is when players start to tighten up their games as they want to ensure that they walk away with some cash.  An experience poker player will agree that this is not a good strategy because the ultimate goal is to win the tournament, not just walk away with the minimum cash.  More importantly you don’t want to make it to the final table with the smallest chip stack and then be the first one out.  There are lots of players out there that do consider making the cash almost as good as winning the tournament.  So this makes the bubble an excellent opportunity to just sneak in there, open up your game and steal pots to exploit your opponents’ tight play.  These tight players will be playing way too conservatively and they will be reluctant to give up any of their money right before the bubble bursts.  When you start to open pots they will be less likely to play back at you, unless they have very strong hands.  When they raise, you can re-raise them because they will not want to put any more chips at risk right before the bubble.

You should also be looking for very tight opponents who are reluctant to defend their blinds with anything less than a really good hand.  You should attack these types of player’s blinds as often as possible.  Remember, you may not be the only one at the table who is figuring out these types of blinds strategy, so if you see other players, particularly players to your right who are also attacking those blinds, sometimes you can re-steal with a well-timed three-bet.  Also, look for players that raise too many times from late position, and look for spots where you can re-raise them out of the pot since they will fold with most of the range they’ve been opening or raising with.

You should also be looking for very tight opponents who are reluctant to defend their blinds with anything less that a really good hand.  Attacking these types of player’s blinds as often as possible is another great stealing strategy.  Remember, you may not be the only one at the table who is figuring out these blinds strategy so if you see other players, particularly players to your right who are also attacking those blinds, sometimes you can re-steal with a well-timed three-bet.  Also, look for players that raise too many times from late position, and look for spots where you can re-raise them out of the pot since they will fold with most of the range they’ve been opening with.

Your steal plays will be more effective if you don’t play like a maniac.  Always maintain a solid image at the table, because it will always end up working in your favor.

Taking The “Blinds” Strategy Seriously

In Texas Hold’em there is no ante, instead there are blinds that serve the same purpose. Big and small blinds are forced bets that rotate around the table getting the action started. Without the blinds, everyone would just wait until they had a perfect hand to play, which would bring the action to a screeching halt.  There are two blinds: a small blind and a big blind.

The big blind is typically set as the amount of the pre-flop bet and the small blind is usually half of the big blind. For example, in a $10-20 limit poker game, the big blind is $10 and the small blind is $5.

If you want to win at poker, it is important to understand the blinds and take the notion of blind strategy seriously. Every round you’re forced to play both a big blind and a small blind. In online poker, you’ll receive between 60 and 70 hands per hour. (More if you’re multi-tabling.) At a full table, this means you’ll be posting blinds 6 or 7 times per hour. In a $10/$20 game, that’s between $90 and $105 each hour.

Use the simple poker blinds formula below to try and figure out how much money you put in the pot for blinds each hour:

(Rounds per hour x big blind post amount) + (Rounds per hour x small blind post amount) = Total dollars put in the pot from blinds.

In my opinion, there are two perspectives to consider when thinking about the blinds:

• Defensive – You want to protect your blinds when you’re in the blinds.
• Offensive – You want to steal the other players’ blinds when you can.

Being able to steal blinds is necessary to be a winning player in a tough game. Stealing blinds in the tough games become more important because players are usually playing tighter.  Take advantage of your table position and play aggressively, raising pre-flop.  If you succeed and the blinds fold, you’ve won a free hand of poker. And of course you have the advantage of stealing a blind from any position if you’re holding a premium starting hand.

You’ll need to defend your blinds from this strategy from other players as well. Good poker players know when to be selective about the hands they play. But if your blinds are stolen every round by a raise, then you’re losing a significant amount of money. The bottom line is that dealing with the blinds is something you’ll have to learn how to do to be a successful player. Especially in tournament play.