[rory]

How often do players fold their blinds to steal raises really? Bad players play bad because they play too many hands so they almost never fold their blinds. Most 'tight' players find all kinds of reasons to defend their big blind, especially in 6-max games, especially against a chronic stealer. 2+2ers are blind defenders and are aggressive about it to boot. I am widely known for being a big blind folder and I only fold my big blind to a steal raise about 55% of the time. So where are all these people handing over their .75 BB to you coming from? I wonder how often you are actually stealing the blinds as opposed to winning the pot somehow after the flop.

In a heads up match the best kind of player to play against is someone who folds too much preflop. 3-way, the game is different because you have to play tighter on the button due to the presence of the small blind. You can't raise 90% of your hands because two people have to not have a legit hand for you to play. So you have to tighten up. Since you have to tighten up, the big blind can tighten up against your steal range so you lose some of your advantage against the tight players. As your steal range moves away from 100% you should more and more care about the big blinds postflop play than their preflop tightness because as you move away from 100% they are correct to play more tight.