1. Stealing The Blinds
2. Stealing Blinds Tournament
3. Steal Blinds
4. Stealing Blinds Texas Hold Em

If the blind steal works two out of three times, you win $6 and lose $5, coming out a buck ahead. That said, blind stealing in cash games usually isn’t as smart an idea as in tournaments, especially in deeper-stacked cash games where the amount of the blinds is small compared to the total stacks. Stealing Blinds As mentioned in the beginning of this article, stealing the blinds should be put to the side when the tournament starts. You can pick some spots from time to time, but your intention should be to get the action started, not to try and really boost up your stack size. Stealing and defending blinds becomes a matter of survival at higher levels and especially at shorter tables, where the blinds rotate almost twice as fast. Let’s make a simple calculation to illustrate the importance of blind stealing. 'Blind stealing' is a term used in poker for when a player in late position raises pre-flop in an attempt to win the uncontested blinds. This strategy is often effective because the players in the blinds will have any random two cards, meaning there is a small chance that they will have a hand worth calling a raise with, allowing you to take their blinds.

Stealing the blinds is an extremely profitable technique for online poker. If you haven’t mastered blind stealing, you are leaving plenty of easy money on the table.

I’ll explain blind stealing here, and offer you some strategies I’ve developed by investigating an database of 2 million poker hands from a range of player types.

Blind Steal defined:

You have a blind steal opportunity if:

• You are on the button; and
• Everybody so far has folded, leaving just you, the big blind, and the small blind in the hand.

Some people consider that if you are in the cut-off (one position to the right of the dealer button), you also have a blind steal opportunity, but in this article, we’ll stick with the stricter definition.

The small blind can also try to steal the big blind, but in this guide, we’ll just deal with the button’s blind steal opportunities, as this is the most common scenario.

When to steal

So you are on the button, and all the players before you have folded. You now have three options:

Stealing The Blinds

• fold. This leaves the blinds to battle it out between them.
• call. This gives the big blind a free ride to the flop. No matter what hand he has, he’ll see the flop, where even 7–2 could become a powerful hand. Furthermore, the small blind only has to call half a big blind more, to see the flop. As the pot already has 2.5 big blinds in it, this is an easy decision for the small blind. So your call has most likely let one player see the flop for free, and another player see the flop cheaply. And you have almost no information about what hands they may have.
• raise. If you now raise, you’ve made a blind steal attempt. The big blind will fold most hands to a raise.

Generally, you should almost always fold or raise in this situation.

I’ve done some calculations over a very large database of hands, and discovered that:

• In tournaments, 53% of the time, the big blind folds to a steal attempt.
• In ring games, 62% of the time, the big blind folds to a steal attempt.

Think that through: more than half the time, a blind steal attempt will give you the blinds without any further play. This suggests that you should make blind steal attempts with a large range of hands.

But it gets even better, as I explain in the section below on playing the flop. Keep reading.

What size should my blind steal attempt be?

A typical opening pre-flop raise should be 2.5 to 3 big blinds. More than this would be an “overbet”, that is a bet far too big in comparison to the pot, and your potential gain.

What if the big blind calls pre flop?

Here’s where the beauty of the blind-steal attempt comes in. On the flop, you have the best position and you were the pre-flop aggressor. So you have a big advantage. The villain needs to act first, but is in a bad situation. Typically the villain will check on the flop.

Why? Most times when the big blind calls your blind-stealing raise, he doesn’t have a strong hand. I know this because he folds to a blind steal attempt only about 60% of the time. 40% of the time he called, which implies the player calls with an extremely wide range of possible hands. So more often than not, you should make a continuation bet on the flop. That is, bet again. How much? Between 50% and 100% of the pot. Less than that makes it cheap for the villain to call. More than that and you are risking too much for the size of the pot.

Let’s look at what my big database of tournament hands tells us about making a continuation bet after a blind steal attempt:

53% of the time when the big blind defended against a blind steal attempt AND faced a continuation bet, they folded.

In ring games, the big blind who tried to defend folded to 44% of continuation bets.

Let me put pre-flop and flop percentages together: in tournaments, the big blind folds to 53% of blind steal attempts. When he defends, he folds a further 53% of time when facing continuation bets. In the second case you’ve won the blinds and the big blind’s attempt to defend against the steal. Less than 25% of the time, you’ll need to play against a villain who is brave enough to make it past your continuation bet.

A blind steal attempt followed by a continuation bet is an extremely rewarding technique in the long run.

What if the big blind villain reraises preflop?

You now have tough decisions to make. Here I can only give vague tips. You’ll need to appraise what you know about your opponent, and take into account the strength of your own hand. I’d tend towards folding non-premium hands, and calling with premium hands. Unless I had observed that this particular villain liked to reraise blind steal attempts. In short, you have the type of decision-making situation that makes poker so enjoyable and difficult.

Blind steal caution #1: Don’t be foolhardy

If you try to steal the blinds with terrible cards, you could end up at showdown. You’ll reveal to the table that you tried stealing without the cards to back it. Do this a couple of times and the table will stop respecting your blind steal attempts. Even if that is the case though, not all is bad. You’re still at a pure mathematical advantage. Such is the beauty of the blind steal attempt.

Blind steal caution 2: Play the player

Remember the old poker mantra: “play the player, not the cards”.

Some players will enjoy reraising your blind steal attempts, putting you in a complicated situation. Be more cautious with blind steal attempts when sitting to their right. Losing a big portion of your stack in a blind-steal attempt gone wrong is not fun.

Other players will fold almost anything to a raise. So if they call, give their hand respect on the flop. Chances are, you’ll have the worse hand on the flop. But you can also increase your stealing range against these players.

Blind stealing and Poker Copilot

Poker Copilot’s poker HUD offers statistics on:

• how often a player makes a blind steal attempt (BSA)
• how often a player folds the big blind to a steal attempt (FBB)
Use these two stats well, and you’ll be able to adjust your blind stealing strategy against each player.

Poker Copilot has a Blind Stealing leak detector. Use it to find out your blind steal rate, and your take from big blind stealing. Poker players are often surprised when the leak detector shows them how profitable blind stealing is.

Summary

• Blind-stealing is profitable. You should be doing it, and doing it well.
• You should attempt to steal roughly half of all your blind steal opportunities.
• Be prepared to often continue the blind steal attempt onto the flop, when the villain defends.

When you are on the button and everyone so far has folded, consider the blinds to be your personal property, and play strongly to grab them as often as you dare.

The following article was found on the 2+2 forums. The original post by Pokey is titled Pooh-Bah Redux: Blind Stealing and can be found here. This article was one of the most inspirational and ground breaking to my play. This post is an absolutely “must read” for any person trying to seriously win at online poker; in fact, you should probably bookmark it and read it again next month. I’ve made some edits for clarity and readability.

Well, if somebody hadn’t changed my title, I’d be a Pooh-Bah now. Due to some…er, “irrational exuberance” on my part, I’m forced to make a SECOND Pooh-bah post. I haven’t had quite as much time to think about it the second time around, but I’ve decided to address an important and often-misunderstood topic in small-stakes no-limit poker: blind stealing. To those of you who consider blind stealing an insignificant part of the no-limit poker game, or perhaps just an “image move” to help get paid off on your big hands, think again – blind stealing can be an extremely valuable part of your poker arsenal.

I’ll admit it: I’m a ruthless, heartless, helpless, hopeless, habitual blind thief. I stole blinds when I played limit Hold’em, I stole blinds when I played tournaments, and I steal blinds when I play no-limit Hold’em. I’ve stolen blinds from my eight-year-old cousin and from an 85-year-old great-grandmother. I steal blinds when I’m playing my 16/9 full-ring TAG game and I steal blinds when I’m playing my 35/20 6-max LAG game. I’ve always stolen blinds, and I always will.

Furthermore, I’m reasonably good at it. In the last 17,500 hands, I’ve attempted to steal the blinds a whopping 38.31% of the time – that works out to be 313 steal attempts out of 817 opportunities. Over those 313 blind-steal attempts, I’ve maintained a healthy win rate of 1.10 PTBB/hand: that’s 110 PTBB/100. (1 PokerTracker Big Bet is equal to 2 Big Blinds) Despite the fact that I’ve only attempted a blind steal one time every five orbits, those steal attempts have generated over 30% of my total profits at the no-limit poker tables. Like I said – done right, blind stealing is a VERY important contributor to your overall win rate.

So, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s turn to the issue at hand: how do you steal the blinds successfully? What’s the formula, what’s the method, what’s the approach? The answer is that it’s quite easy, and despite that, it’s wildly successful.

Stick ’em up! Place your blinds in my stack and no one gets hurt.

Pokey’s Rules for Blind Theft

Know yourself and know your target

Blind steals rely heavily on folding equity. The more frequently you try to steal the blinds, the weaker the average hand you’ll have when you attempt a steal. That means that for the frequent blind thief, you’re hoping NOT to get to a showdown. The good news is that the odds of your remaining opponents having a decent hand are slim – there are only two or three players left to act, and they have random hands. The odds none of the remaining players have “good” hands are as follows:

• “Super Premium Hand,” AA-JJ, AK: 94.1% chance with two players left to act, and 91.3% chance with three players left to act.
• “Premium Hand,” AA-TT, AK, AQ: 90.8% chance with two players left to act, and 86.6% chance with three players left to act.
• “Great Hand,” AA-99, AK, AQ, KQ: 87.8% chance with two players left to act, and 82.3% chance with three players left to act.
• “Very Good Hand,” all Great Hands plus 88, AJ: 84.6% chance with two players left to act, and 77.9% chance with three players left to act.
• “Good Hand,” any pair, any two Broadway: 67.4% chance with two players left to act, and 55.3% chance with three players left to act.
• “Above Average Hand,” any ace, any suited, any pair, any two Broadway: 29.5% chance with two players left to act, and 16% chance with three players left to act.

Note what this means: the “looser” your remaining opponents, the harder it will be to successfully steal the blinds preflop. If your blind steals are a standard 4xBB, then you will wager 4xBB to win 1.5xBB, so if you immediately win 3 times out of 11 you will show an immediate preflop profit, even if you never win a hand when you don’t win preflop. Since 3 out of 11 is 27.3%, if our opponents are likely to fold 72.7% of the time, we win immediately. Against players who will only play “very good hands” versus a steal attempt, you should be stealing with literally any two cards from either BB or CO. Doing so will show an instant profit even before the flop. Of course, the hand range your opponent will consider worthy of a preflop call will expand as you attempt steals more frequently, so you need to remain aware of both your table image and your opponent’s play style.

Aggression, Aggression, Aggression

When you get called preflop, this is not a tragedy – it’s an opportunity. Most opponents crumble quickly against steady aggression; to successfully steal blinds, we need to apply that steady aggression. However, we need to do so CAREFULLY so as to make sure that our attempts are profitable. The flop is going to improve our hand about one time in three. Let’s assume that when we’re called, we’re typically behind. This will be the case when we are relentless with our steal attempts and our opponents are conservative with their calls. While this sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy, it’s actually not bad at all. Consider that even if our opponent is playing as incredibly tight, some of his hand range will include unpaired preflop hands like AK. So, what are the odds that by the flop our opponent’s hand is at least strong enough to beat unimproved pocket deuces?

• If our opponent is only playing “Super Premium Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 73% of the time.
• If our opponent is playing “Premium Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 64% of the time.
• If our opponent is playing “Great Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 59.4% of the time.
• If our opponent is playing “Very Good Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 56.7% of the time.
• If our opponent is playing “Good Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 49% of the time.
• If our opponent is playing “Above Average Hands,” his hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 40.1% of the time.

Now we get into the art of blind stealing: how large should our flop bet be?We want to make sure our flop bet is at the same size whether we’ve flopped well or not, but we’re balancing competing issues: how often our opponent will improve, how often we will have a strong hand, how often our opponent will improve and still fold, how often our opponent will improve and we’ll improve more, how often we’ll improve but our opponent will improve more, etc. As complicated as this all sounds, we’ve got a few things going for us: namely, that we have played the hand aggressively so far and that we will have position on this and every remaining street in the hand.

For people who steal infrequently (say, 20% of the time or less), your flop bets should be sizable. Given that you are only attempting a steal 20% of the time, you will be stealing with reasonably solid hands yourself: collectively, all suited aces, any pair, and any two Broadway cards make up 20.4% of possible holdings, meaning that your hand on the flop will beat unimproved pocket deuces 47.6% of the time. The odds that your hand is worth pursuing is therefore significant enough to warrant a full pot-sized continuation bet from you; if your opponent folds, great, and if not, you have a valuable hand often enough to make this a highly profitable hand for you.

However, I don’t recommend stealing “only” 20% of the time. I recommend stealing much more often than that. As an example, my steal rate of 38.3% corresponds roughly to stealing with “any pair, any ace, any king, any two Broadway cards, and any suited connector down to 87s.” If that’s your steal range, the chances that on the flop you have at least a pair will be noticeably lower (something like 42.8%). The answer is not to bet less often on the flop; rather, the answer is to bet a smaller quantity on the flop. While a pot-sized bet needs to win 50% of the time to be immediately profitable, a 2/3-pot sized bet only needs to win 40% of the time to be immediately profitable.

Notice what this means: If your opponent plays very tightly against your preflop raise, the odds that he has a decent hand on the flop go up, lowering the value of your flop bets. However, the odds that he CALLS your preflop bet go DOWN – raising the value of your PREFLOP bets. At this stage of the hand, we’ve already had two chances to win the pot: one if our opponent folds to the preflop bet and one if our opponent folds to the flop bet.

Consider the value of a steal attempt from the big blind against the various opponents, assuming they will (a) fold preflop if their hand is outside of the specified range (winning 0.75 PTBBs), and (b) only call the flop with a hand that can beat 22 (when they fold, we win 2.75 PTBBs, and when they fold, we lose 5.5 PTBBs). This assumes our betting is 2 PTBB preflop and 3.5 PTBB on the flop. If we consider only the tightest and loosest opponents, we see this:

– Super Premium Hands: 94.1% of the time they fold preflop, 27% of the time they fold on the flop.

EV = 0.941 *(+0.75) + (0.059 *0.27)*(+2.75) + (0.059 *0.73)*(-5.5) = +0.51 PTBB.

– Premium Hands: 90.8% of the time they fold preflop, 36% of the time they fold on the flop.

EV = 0.908 *(+0.75) + (0.092 *0.36)*(+2.75) + (0.092 *0.64)*(-5.5) = +0.45 PTBB.

Skipping Ahead to the Loosest Players

– Good Hands: 67.4% of the time they fold preflop, 51% of the time they fold on the flop.

EV = 0.674 *(+0.75) + (0.326 *0.51)*(+2.75) + (0.326 *0.49)*(-5.5) = +0.08 PTBB.

– Above Average Hands: 29.5% of the time they fold preflop, 59.9% of the time they fold on the flop.

EV = 0.295 *(+0.75) + (0.705 *0.599)*(+2.75) + (0.705 *0.401)*(-5.5) = -0.17 PTBB.

Once again, this demonstrates a bizarre truism: the less likely your opponent is to fold, the less profitable your blind-stealing will prove to be in terms of folding equity. Note well two points, however: first, this assumes that our opponent is calling EVERY time he has a hand that is at least as strong as a pair of deuces; thus, the opponent holding 22 on a board of AKQ is assumed to call our continuation bet. Also, our EV calculations have thus far assumed that whenever we have not won with the flop bet, we lose every time. This should prove FAR from true, especially against the loosest of our opponents. A safe bet is that we will win at LEAST 1/3 of the time when our flop bet is called, and that safely makes all of these calculations +EV.

After the flop, easy and simple rules must be thrown out the window. From here on in, there is too much “art” in the play to be easily categorized in a summary like this. I do want to point out a few simple points that might make help you in your blind-stealing adventures:

1. Much like bears in the woods, your opponents are more afraid of you than you are of them. This is your hand – you’ve raised preflop and bet the flop. You’re SCARY, here. Given that your opponent has exhibited NO aggression at this point, your folding equity remains solid. Use that ruthlessly. If a scare card hits on the turn and your opponent checks to you again, fire that second (third?) barrel! Don’t be afraid to bet the turn ace, the turn king, the turn pair, the turn flush card, the turn straight card, or the turn blank if you think your opponent is running scared. This is another place where knowing your enemy helps.

2. If your opponent gets aggressive, TRUST him. There is no shame in folding your blind steal attempt. If the flop comes and your opponent bets the pot, or check-raises big, feel free to fold your . In fact, feel OBLIGATED to do so. Blind stealing is decidedly a “small pot game” strategy; if you are risking your stack on a blind steal, you’ve screwed up big-time. Similarly, if you are stealing with total garbage (86s or some such) and someone reraises, GET OUT. Fold immediately, and without hesitation. Don’t bother seeing what the flop brings – there’s no profit in it.

3. Take free cards if they are beneficial to you. One strength of this strategy is that you’ll often have good draws on the flop, and your opponent will usually offer you a free card on the turn. If you’ve got a good draw, feel free to take it. Don’t ALWAYS take it, though – I’ve often fired another barrel with a hand like when the board looked like . Not only did that turn card 4c improve my hand by giving me nine more outs, but it also scared the doody out of my opponent, making him think that I just turned trips. Why not take advantage of the fear? Instead of playing for my 2-to-1 draw, I can bet immediately and win the pot a significant chunk of the time, and STILL win 1/3 of the time at showdown (usually for even more money, since my opponent won’t see my straight or flush coming).

4. Don’t get discouraged if your steals fail. We’re often worried that because our opponent played back at us the last time we tried to steal, we need to tighten up considerably. Don’t. Our opponents don’t adjust NEARLY as much as we think they do. Just because you got reraised preflop the last time you tried to steal doesn’t mean that they’ve got your number; more likely, SB had AA when he fought back. Now he’s got , and he does NOT have a pair of balls. Hit him again, and keep hitting him.

5. Know your image! While players don’t adjust very well or very far or very effectively, they DO adjust. If you’ve picked up the pot with preflop bets and flop bets the last four hands in a row, fold your 98s in the CO this time. You are not a slave to your cards; understand your table image, understand that your opponents are getting pissed off at you, and understand that your folding equity falls every additional time you win a pot without showing your cards. After you’ve folded preflop three or four times in a row, you can go back to stealing and bullying, but give your opponents a tiny chance to catch their breaths between steals.

6. DO NOT SLOWPLAY. I cannot emphasize this enough. Your entire strategy here is a bluff that depends entirely on your playing your monsters and your junk identically. There’s always the temptation when you have AA preflop and catch A55 on the flop to suddenly change gears. Don’t! With any luck, your opponent won’t believe you, and will call all-in with QQ unimproved. Not only will you stack him, but you’ll also get even more respect the next time you play fast on a board of A55…only this time you’ll have 98s….Fast play of big hands is CRUCIAL to the success of this strategy. Not only does it boost the shania (metagame purposes) of all your weak junk by elevating your folding equity, but it also gets paid off much more frequently than it would if you were only nut-peddling.

Stealing Blinds Tournament

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Steal Blinds

Stealing Blinds Texas Hold Em