Re-raises/re-steals late in a tournament.

[JammyDodga]

Hi, I’ve been final tabling quite a few MTTs in the last few weeks, and I’ve just realised something which might explain why I’m not making it into the top 3. I’m almost never re-raising people without a real monster, but I’m folding to people whenever they re-raise me, again, unless I’ve got a really good hand.

This is making me think that people are re-stealing from me, but I’m not re-stealing from them, which must be giving them a big advantage.

OK, so my questions are these.

How do people respond to a re-raise if they don’t have much of a hand? How often does it have to happen before you push back, and what kinds of cards do you want to be doing this with? Do you ever just flat call the re-raise?

With re-stealing from other players, what kinds of things are you thinking about with this? i.e. what makes a good opportunity for a re-steal, and when should you just fold?

Thanks,

[Fermion5]

I play similarly to how you described and have also been curious about resteals.

[crankalicious]

This is intended to be more conversational than authoritative, but my take on this is it's all about table dynamics.

Who is re-stealing and what happens when somebody stands up to them? Who is folding to a stealing attempt and who is folding to a re-steal? After a couple of cycles, you should know who the aggressive players are and who's doing the raising and what their response is to a re-raise. After that, you should be able to target a few of the players you might want to attack when they're trying to steal and re-steal. I wouldn't do it with any two cards necessarily, but I think if you find yourself being attacked a lot, you'll need to stand up to it quickly. Pick a good pot odds situation and go for it.

Incidentally, I'd be interested in a more theoretical response to the problem if there is one.

[Brons]

It's something you must comfortable with. And resteals can blow up into your face alot of the times too.

Example: if you get to the flop after preflop raising and it comes up, for example, low 247 rainbow and someone bets half pot you're up to a steal alot of the times. Reraising might get you the pot right at that moment. Being wrong means you're going to lose those chips tho.

Remember: don't try to steal/resteal from shortstacks. Or else you're in danger of them just pushing into you giving you a difficult decision.

[footnbaseball]

Ansky's restealing posts in the anthology are the best things I've ever read on the subject.