blind steal/blind defense.

[aK13]

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It's much better for metagame if you can pick up a really solid hand in the BB and really make him spew against it. After you get to showdown and he sees you are 3banging and raising with a legit hand, then you can abuse this image later by 3 banging hands like these, and narrow his stealing range and also pick up pots by 3banging and autobetting flops that miss him since he fears you have a big hand again. Also if you decide to defend with hands like 98 later on, and he plays back at you a little, get to showdown and you might win pots from him on low boards since he figures you have all overcards.

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I don't think you should overestimate the whole blind stealing at a limit like this.
Stepping up and 3banging preflop against someone who has picked on stealing your blinds might often be enough to stop people from stealing with all kind of trash.
Your whole metagame thing sounds quite nice but IMHO everything involved with blindstealing depends too strongly on your opponent to make good advice be so easy.

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It's sorta over simplified the way I put it, as sometimes you really do have to make a stand before you get a decent good sized hand, but you can at least make your show down strong (top pair, etc). This is also why I'd prefer to make a play with a suited connector like 65s over A4o. You can put in a lot of bets as a semibluff to get them to fold, or on the chance you hit a big hand like a straight or flush, you show off that you're not putting in raises with garbage (river obviously, but he'll probably extrapolate to mean you flopped hard in the future if you put in bets on the flop, or even big hand preflop since you put in 3bets preflop, etc). You get the point.

However, I think it's a little silly if you believe that someone who is incorporating blind stealing into their game isn't taking metagame and image into consideration as well.

[Oink]

Why is it that everybody wants to 3-bet this hand preflop?

So the guy is an aggresive stealer with a wide range of hands. Say you 3-bet A4 and flop comes AT3 and if he dosent fold Hero is likely dominated. Unless he has a better A he is folding almost always on the flop. If OTOH hero just calls he can get a flop c-bet and often a 2'nd barrel out of villain.
Now say the flop comes 268. Villain should know Hero has high cards and that this flop likely missed him. Bang villan raise the flop with air and Hero is screwed cuz a call down is marginal.

With ragged A's against an aggresive stealer I much prefer to just call preflop, c/r flops that connects and look for SD on flops that doesnt connect that good with villains range.

3-betting Axo with x<8 against most villains is silly

[sean c]

Oink,

With any ace against a blind stealer you likely have the best hand. After most flops you will still likely have the best hand. He isn't only calling ace high flops with a better ace he could call down with anything. 3-betting a stealer pre flop will also slow down his stealing.

[MPB]

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However, I think it's a little silly if you believe that someone who is incorporating blind stealing into their game isn't taking metagame and image into consideration as well.

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That's not what I wanted to say or what I think. Of course it's pretty standard to consider this kind of things, but I also think the main image or metagame consideration that is going on with our villain in the given hand might very easily just be like "hey, this guys is folding all the time and im winning pf with 73o, how cool is that".
Stepping up with a somewhat decent hand might end this quite quickly even without TP.

[Oink]

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Oink,

With any ace against a blind stealer you likely have the best hand. After most flops you will still likely have the best hand. He isn't only calling ace high flops with a better ace he could call down with anything. 3-betting a stealer pre flop will also slow down his stealing.

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The hand plays easier after the flop IMO for the reasons I mentioned. I dont care much about pushing slim equity edges preflop, but care more about how the hand plays postflop.

Playing back a lot on the flop and turn will also slow down his stealing!

BTW. Slightly different spot, but this post by Stigmata in mid high stakes explains my thoughts pretty well.

[sean c]

Oink,

Stigmata's post in the link is good. I prefer 3-betting pre at the limits i play. Over lots of hands i feel its more effective but the fact is you should probably mix it up and do both against a stealer.

[Second Toughest]

I'd fold this and wait for a better hand. A4o is tough to play out of position on most flops.

The way villain appears to play he's got to steal a lot of blinds to make up for the pay-off he's willing to give to a ligit defence.