Stealing blinds

[ilya]

There is a lot of talk about it, but how often do you find yourself in a position to steal blinds at levels 4+ (i.e., over 8-10xBB)? Maybe it happens more often at the $50 SnGs and up, where you start with 1000 chips...but at the $20s, I don't find myself with over 900 chips at level 4 all that often. So what am I missing here?

[zephyr]

The short answer: Nothing.

I find the majority of my blind stealing occurs when I have less than 10BB. Hence, I'm pushing to steal.

Zephyr

[ilya]

Oh.

But here's the thing....when you can afford to fold, you can (profitably) do things like open-raise 3xBB with K5 on the button.

But when you have 8xBB, you can't raise 3xBB....yet you can't really push that K5, either. I mean, you could. But it might not even be +CEV - never mind +$EV.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is...that sucks. And it seems like there are lots of hands like that.

[The Yugoslavian]

I think those K4o hands are where player reads and position comes more into play . If you've read Magick's (sp?) article he fairly convincingly shows that stealing or pushing from the SB every time with any hand is +CEV. Frankly, even if your opponent is very lose, it's still +CEV it would seem at any level where u have 13x or less of the BB. Of course, this must change drastically on the button and CO, etc.

It would seem to me that one of the main things that separates the elite SNG players and the wannabes (like me [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ) is the ability to have a 'feel' for the game, the opponents, and a sense of which times are best for pushing with nothing. From reading Strasser's posts, I'd imagine a significant portion of his ROI comes from stuffing his chips into the middle not with the best hand necessarily, but at the right time. If your 72o can play like AA, that's a huge coup for you -- but I still don't think I know when all of those situations come up.

On the other hand, I've heard ZJ mention that playing ABC poker can beat the 215 SNGs (his ABC I'm sure is much more precise than mine) so maybe it is more formuliac than I'm thinking.

Thoughts appreciated!

[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[tigerite]

I steal from CO or even CO+1, if it's a passive table and 7 handed, or 6 handed, and I have more than 10BB. I use the 2.5BB raise rule. I even pushed a small stack off a hand on the river (who called my bluff, I had J3 sooted or some rubbish) so it can definitely work. Of course, the main blind stealing occurs on the bubble, especially if you're the big stack and small stack to your left who keeps folding. I finally had this situation today. Pity it only lasted 3 hands, (before he was SB and I could not fold my BB because he was already all-in!) but I stole every single one.

[skirtus]

My blinding stealing starts when we are 6 handed or blinds are 50/100. At this point Im being very aggressive from SB and Button. I would push a wide range of hands from the SB into a BB who has a similiar size stack to me. I more careful if BB is small or big stacked. This also depends on my table image. If Ive done this 3x in a row I would tighten up my push hands accordingly.

[skirtus]

Ive been analyzing hand rankings and push EV from the SB. First I went through all my hhs at the 10s to see what type of hands big, medium, and small stacks will call pushes with. Than I ran EV calcs against these range of hands. I use to try and label players as tight, average and loose but this can be difficult to do while multi-tabling. I think stack size is the best way to place the villian on a hand calling range. These calcs showed that pushing from the SB when you have between 5-10BB is +EV over a wide range of hands. Marginal hands into small or large stacks are the most borderline. This is pretty obvious. If anyone wants to view the spreadsheet you can pm me and Ill e-mail it to you. These were done quickly so they may be filled with mistakes.