About Stealing

[Walter Pullis]

I am, at best, an intermediate level player, so bear with me.

Many of the poker texts(Gordon's and Hellmuth's in particular)seem to imply that it is no big trick to stay alive in a tournament - just steal the blinds every round or so! I know they are talking about a MTT which is now down to a table or two, but I would assume this should apply to a STT

I wonder. This morning I was down to about 900 chips with 2 stacks of about 3000. Both were solid players, not maniacs.
Every time I or others tried to steal with, say, A8o, at least one of the big stacks played policemen and called. If the flop is QJ8 and a big stack sticks in 300, what do you do? I need some help here.

[barycentric]

What are the blinds? How many players are left? I assume BB is 100 here. If they police 3xBB raises so liberally, push instead preflop when folded to you in late position.

[Walter Pullis]

The blinds were at 200 in the illustration I made. I put in 400.

[Afterh0urs]

Your problem is that you're not making it hurt for them to call you. With 900 chips and 200 blinds, your only steal play should be allin.

I would take advantage of their liberal calling of the minraise by pushing allin on my steal attempts and then, in the case I found myself with a premium hand, minraise and hope they bite on the flop.

[vindikation]

[ QUOTE ]
I would take advantage of their liberal calling of the minraise by pushing allin on my steal attempts and then, in the case I found myself with a premium hand, minraise and hope they bite on the flop.

[/ QUOTE ]

Great advice, never thought of that!

I think the general rule is that if you have less than 10BB in chips you better move all in or fold. Once you get down to 2-3BB just wait for a really good hand and push, you've lost your fold equity.

A lot depends on player style and stack sizes but it's usually a good push:

1). If you're in the BB everyone folds and the SB only calls.
2). You're in the SB and everyone folds.
3). Everyone folds and you're on the button (might get called more because this is the typical steal position).
4). UTG because you're "supposed" to have a good hand here to raise.
5). Button -1 (buying the button) less obvious than a button steal.

Again more of it depends on table size, stack sizes and player styles than the cards you are playing. There are a lot of great posts here on fold equity, do a search.

[microbet]

In order for you to assume the flop is good for you, you would have to have AA or KK as your premium hand. AK will usually miss the flop.

When you get down near the money, whatever buyin you are at, people are paying attention to you. If you push a lot to steal the blinds, they will think you are an idiot and that you don't have good cards when you push. They will still usually fold, but they will think you have bad cards. If you, all of a sudden, min-raise, they may think it means you have crappier crap, but they may actually put two and two together. I'm not saying I never minraise a monster, but I have to have some read. Usually that would be, they are hyper-aggressive and will come over the top just to punish me. In general, I just push my monster; only I pray they call instead of praying they fold.

[Afterh0urs]

I agree with most of the situations you list but, generally, pushing UTG with low chips is a bad play as it screams desperation to me. Sure, you can have a monster, but to a lot of players it looks like you just feel that your two cards are better than the ones you expect to see on the BB next hand.

If, however, you have good chips, UTG can look convincing.

[vindikation]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with most of the situations you list but, generally, pushing UTG with low chips is a bad play as it screams desperation to me. Sure, you can have a monster, but to a lot of players it looks like you just feel that your two cards are better than the ones you expect to see on the BB next hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cool, never thought of it that way before. Good stuff, thanks.

[Afterh0urs]

I wasn't giving general advice. I was giving advice as to how I'd play here against big stack players that are known to be loose passive. I thought it was assumed that by premium hands I meant high pocket pairs. AK, AQ, AJ are still allins with me as they're not hands I want to see a flop with.

The reason I said to minraise a monster is because these bigstacks will be more likely to call than if you pushed as doubling you up is not really something they want to do. However, if they hit a piece, they'll obviously be willing to call your allin. If you pushed allin preflop, you'd have to survive whatever hand they hit on the flop anyway, so you might as well make it as likely as possible for them to call.

[Walter Pullis]

Great posts all. How about the second part of my question,however. I don't think stealing in online low buy-in tournaments is as easy as the textbook writers make in seem to be. My experience is that you can only make stealing a source of decent chip growth if:
1. There are no truly large stacks or
2. The large stack(s) are trying to coast into the money(which is rare)