According to Peter_rus.......

[cartman]

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What would be interesting is to chart the correlation between attempt to steal % and BB/opportunity.

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Exactly. That is precisely what I am trying to get a handle on.

I suspect that as I have added more and more stealing hands that I have been getting played back at more and more. I wonder if--even if all the hands I have added are profitable--the fact that I steal so much causes my original set of stealing hands to win so much less that it actually overwhelms the extra gain a get from the added hands.

I think that if we put BB/opportunity on the vertical axis and attempt to steal blind % on the horizontal axis we will have an upside down parabola which intersects horizontal axis at 0 (ASB%=0) and again somewhere around 60 to 80 (ASB % so high that we actually lose money). The vertex represents the optimal attempt to steal blind %. This would of course be different for each player based on his postflop ability.

I suspect that for me, my current ASB% of almost 43% might be to the right of this optimal point and that maybe I would be better off cutting down on my steal attempts, but it is hard for me to justify eliminating hands that appear to be profitable stealing hands.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

yeah I'm saying that your BB/opportunioty will be low because you never steal, but your BB/100 those times you DO steal will be lower than you think because people will know you have either AA/KK. with enough hands, they'll know it's AA and then you make .75BB/hand. playing other hands will raise your BB/opportunity because you're stealing more, but your BB/100 with AA will rise as well because you make more action for yourself.

[PokerBob]

my steal % is 30.3 over 71K hands of 5/10 6max
steal and raised - 2,971 times - $10,387 - 0.35BB/hand
steal and called - 17 times - $267 - 1.57BB/hand
steal and folded - 6,348 - 0 - 0

total 9,336 - $10,654 - +0.11bb/opportunity

[marand]

What you are saying is interesting and sounds reasonable. I think it will be very difficult to make that graph though due to sample size issues. But with enough good players contributing perhaps it's possible.

If they are playing back at you more you win less with your bad hands, but more with your good hands. So the more hands you steal with the less you want to get played back at, but of course the exact opposite is what happends. But I think that as long as you practise good table selection most opponents will not vary their game too much on how you play. They will simply play their hand like they are used to. Bad players are not observant and if all your opponents are observant you need to get better at table selection [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[marand]

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yeah I'm saying that your BB/opportunioty will be low because you never steal, but your BB/100 those times you DO steal will be lower than you think because people will know you have either AA/KK. with enough hands, they'll know it's AA and then you make .75BB/hand. playing other hands will raise your BB/opportunity because you're stealing more, but your BB/100 with AA will rise as well because you make more action for yourself.

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The problem with your assumption is that your opponents are not that observant. Most players will have no clue whatsoever of how you play. If they all do you need to find a better table to play at.

[Monty Cantsin]

There is a limit to the utility of statistically based analysis of this issue. For example, during your first 100 hands or so against a player you aren't going to get played back at overmuch because your status as a chronic ASB-clown won't have become apparent yet. Likewise if you've been at the table for a long time but just haven't had the opportunity to steal in a while. Also, some opponents are super-sensitive to this issue (defending too much in general or defending tenaciously when they suspect you steal too much) and some are oblivious.

In other words, local conditions trump global strategies in a way that won't show up in a statistical footprint.

like all stats, these are very good for a general overview of the situation and will help to show that you're in the right ballpark, but don't actually help you play ball.

I guess I'm saying that you shouldn't be worried so much about perfecting your ASB number but more about perfecting your ability to analyze local conditions and adjust your blind stealing on the fly.

/mc

[meow_meow]

There are a subset of hands for which you are better off getting called than you are having it folded down (something like AA-99, AK-Q(J?), KQ?) These make up roughly 3% of your hands (so 10% of your steal attempts if you steal 30% of the time).
Anyway, my point is that getting more action on these hands by increasing you steal attempts will at least partially offset the additional action you get on hands you would prefer to just win the blinds outright with.

Further, given the "no flop" numbers that we've seen so far, I'm not sure that stealing more actually leads to more blind calling, which isn't that surprising given that most players will never have seen you before and/or play their cards the same way regardless of opposition.

[Victor]

youre right. i was totally misinterpreting this.

[Lurker4]

tiny sample size, approx 16k hands at 5/10 6 max, running really good over most of the 16k

40.61 ASB
$5395.87 over 1009 hands
-$65 over 5 hands
$0 over 1705 hands

.196 BB/steal opportunity

[cartman]

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I guess I'm saying that you shouldn't be worried so much about perfecting your ASB number but more about perfecting your ability to analyze local conditions and adjust your blind stealing on the fly.

/mc

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Your points are excellent. I don't adjust my blind steals at all based on my opponents because I don't know how to do so. I understand that I should steal a ton against opponents who fold their blinds too much, but it seems counterintuitive to me to steal less than my normal amount against a player who almost never folds his blinds because it seems like the top 43% of my holdings should play favorably against the top 80%+ of his holdings. Yet it seems that the prevailing approach is to steal less against extremely loose blinds. What am I missing here?

Thanks,
Cartman