[stokken]

It is a necessity to keep your stack from shrinking and with the blinds ever rising stealing will make up for a good portion of your ability to progress and be a force waiting for the premium hands and hopefully contribute a less flawed game then the opposition and finish where the nice figures are.

One will attempt a steal based on read and position and to some exctent the holecards. It could be argued that if your holecards are better then random/average you are making a value bet.

The assumption is that you opponets will not call/raise without perhaps a hand in the top 20% of the range.

There are then situations where one can arrive at a situation where one believes the assaulted is not standing up with the top hands or at least one has to include a good few more into the range he`ll pop it up or take a stand with.

Which factors would/should one consider the most in these situations?

1. Pot odds
2. Strenght of own hand.
3. Stacksizes between the battlers.
4. Own stacksize relative to field pre/post a possible showdown
5. Prospect of possibilities if hand is won

It is underlying that the hand will involve 1/3 or more of your own stack.

I am playing for first. But have a recurrent problem when I steal/valuebet a hand in the top 20 and are called/raised by one that is presumably in the same range or better.


Stokken