Taking stealing the blinds to next level

[vulturesrow]

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dbitel,

Nice post. This will work against most SSNL opponents. The only defense against your play is for the blinds to widen their 3-bet range, which will open up the table for more action.

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I think this is a mistake. Defending blinds <<<<< Minimizing the # hands of hands you play OOP.

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I think "defending blinds" is as profitable as "stealing blinds". Why? Because so many donkeys play like this without understanding it completely, or at all. You can attack this people by either reraising their button raise, or by calling and either leading or check raising the flop.

[the machine]

very nice dan.

do you think there is a certain limit where this may be optimal and a limit where it just might not work at?

[Dan Bitel]

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dbitel,

Nice post. This will work against most SSNL opponents. The only defense against your play is for the blinds to widen their 3-bet range, which will open up the table for more action.

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I think this is a mistake. Defending blinds <<<<< Minimizing the # hands of hands you play OOP.

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I think "defending blinds" is as profitable as "stealing blinds". Why? Because so many donkeys play like this without understanding it completely, or at all. You can attack this people by either reraising their button raise, or by calling and either leading or check raising the flop.

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I'm going to have to disagree here I'm afraid.

Reason being is that even if you steal a bit too much OTB, its actually quite hard to stop, seeing as how you're in position the whole time

Defending against re-steals on teh other hand is really quite easy b/c of position. Tighten up on the button a tiny bit and call preflop/flop a bit lighter. It will put the re-stealer in a really bad spot I think

[Dan Bitel]

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very nice dan.

do you think there is a certain limit where this may be optimal and a limit where it just might not work at?

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Do you mean a limit as in stakes or a limit as to your stealing range?

I'll presume you mean stakes. I really don't have quite enough experience to tell exactly. But from what I've found, it works fine from $25NL all the way up to $400NL. More important than the stakes are the players.

Obviously the looser the players and the more they are adjusting, the less you should steal

[vulturesrow]

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dbitel,

Nice post. This will work against most SSNL opponents. The only defense against your play is for the blinds to widen their 3-bet range, which will open up the table for more action.

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I think this is a mistake. Defending blinds <<<<< Minimizing the # hands of hands you play OOP.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think "defending blinds" is as profitable as "stealing blinds". Why? Because so many donkeys play like this without understanding it completely, or at all. You can attack this people by either reraising their button raise, or by calling and either leading or check raising the flop.

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I'm going to have to disagree here I'm afraid.

Reason being is that even if you steal a bit too much OTB, its actually quite hard to stop, seeing as how you're in position the whole time

Defending against re-steals on teh other hand is really quite easy b/c of position. Tighten up on the button a tiny bit and call preflop/flop a bit lighter. It will put the re-stealer in a really bad spot I think

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dbitel,

Im not talking about people who play intelligently on the button. Against those guys either change seats, leave the game, or only play very solid hands against them. Im talking about the people who watch WPT on the telly and then decide that position play = raising every single time I have the button. That is easy to exploit.

[Paul Thomson]

Ok. So I've been doing this for awhile and want to add a little supllement to this.

STACK SIZES:
My favorite player to make this move against is the loose passive SMALL STACK player. The ideal small stack is somewhere between 30 - 35 BB. The opponent will limp and I raise 4x the BB. The blinds folds and the passive player inevitably calls.

FLOP ($9.50 BB) x x x

Passive guy checks and Hero bet's 7x the BB. Villian folds.

Now the benefit of this set-up is that you're bet places the villian in a difficult position that if they're going to play at all, they're playing for their stacks at minimum risk to you.

Therefore, it's very unlikely that the villian will play back at your with nothing. Second, I often find that these short stacks will play for their entire stack with top pair weak kicker.

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HAND READING:

When you make this play with K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].

FLOP 8[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 7[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

This is a good place to check behind. It so very likely that you're opponent got a piece of this flop. And since the players who tend to limp will do it often means that you have to sometimes check behind on the flop, so they will believe you're other continuation bets.

[toybux]

This is a pretty standard play for me. I try to avoid it against unknowns all that often, but there are tons and tons of villians at SSNL that this works brilliantly against. They'll limp-fold or limp-call and fold to a c-bet so often it is mindboggling.

As a variation, try this when there are a ton of limpers. If you are in SB and UTG starts a limp cascade and you end up with three limpers, popping it to 7xBB will take it down >70% of the time if you haven't been doing it too often (pay attention to people who will limp-call larger bets, cause they hurt this play's profitability a lot -- on the other hand if they call but fold to c-bets they up the profitability a lot). I'll make this steal with ATC when the situation is right, and it has been pretty profitable.

[wrkingtobegreat]

Sick post. Blind stealing is our salary.