[CrisBrown]

Hiya HotRod,

This is one of my banes as well. If you have a big, scary stack, you can steal with relative impunity. With a middle stack, you still have to steal, but you have to tread with caution because oftentimes the big stacks will play back at you with any Ace, for the chance of knocking you off.

One way to avoid this is to vary your steal positions. If you limit yourself to stealing from the button or SB, you have a couple of problems. First, you get fewer chances to steal, because often someone will have raised ahead of you. And second, when you do get a chance because it has been folded around to you, it does read as an obvious steal and people will play back at you. This is especially true if the big stacks are to your left. If you vary your steal positions -- UTG, MP, etc. -- your LP steals will be less obvious, and will get more respect.

Finally, the more often you steal, the more likely you are to get played back at (again, unless you have a monster stack). Assuming no strong hands to play, you'd like to steal about three times per two orbits, so you stay ahead of the blinds and gain a little. You can adjust that down a bit when you catch strong hands, as there's no reason to take chances with trash hands when you're picking up chips with legitimate ones.

Together, these ideas might make you feel less pressured to steal from obvious steal positions, so you can lay down a few hands in those positions, and get more respect when you do steal-raise.

Cris