restealing in the blinds

[Freelancer]

I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Reraising light in the blinds against a blind thief is a very precarious business and an easy road to broke town if you mess up. If done right however it can make you a lot of money, and on top of that its a good excersize for high stakes poker (this is part of my preparation).

To resteal a player a couple of conditions have to be met;
1) The opponent has a wide blind stealing range (ie. first in late position raise), its obviously a bad idea to try and make AA/KK fold.
2) He’s capable of folding weak to mid strength hands to a reraise.
3) Know thy opponent, this is more important than anything else.

You are also burning money if you try this against a tilting opponent so PAY ATTENTION to there play. This basically brings us to a basic straightforward ABC tag player, or a solid LAG (although they can get stubborn) to try this play against.

There are a couple of reasons why restealing is so profitable:
1) The range of hands he steals with is much wider than the range he calls a reraise with = profit.
2) It establishes a ‘crazy image’ making it more likely that you get action on your big hands.
3) If you hit big your hand it is well disguised.

This brings me to my next point; what hands to reraise with??
Its optimal to reraise the hands that are easy to get away from (so don’t reraise ATo, your in trouble if you hit a A) and can make a well disguised monster hand. This brings us to suited connectors and pocket pairs. They can both make huge hands that are very well disguised. It also helps that you don’t feel bad letting go off 45s preflop after a 4-bet (knowing that your opponent hand AA/KK/AK) than for instance QJs. One other thing, it might be a good idea to make your reraise slightly larger than what you usually raise in position to make them pay for there positional adventage. So far I’ve just been betting pot sized reraises, but I am considering changing this. I would like to hear your thougths about this.

On to the next point of the hand; postflop.
One more thing; If your opponent 4-bets you preflop; FOLD. Its rarely a bluff, this might seem obvious but the obvious stuff is equally important (ahum my play of pushing 56s against KK is a good example).
So your opponent called your 3-bet preflop, depending on your opponent and your past play this usually defines his range a lot. In general I would say (if you never 3-bet him before) his range is JJ-AA AK/AQ (this is all assuming a solid thinking straightforward player).

This makes the flop texture very important if you decide if you want to c-bet. For instance if the flop comes up 37Tr you can savely c-bet knowing that a big part of his range missed the flop and is likely to fold. A flop of AQ5r is a lot more troublesome, a big part of his range hit the flop so I am much more likely to check/fold the flop.

I have been experimenting a bit with a mix of check/raising and check/folding depending on the villains in question. I haven’t got very far with this, I’ve only had to guts to check/raise when I hit the flop hard and villains frequintly check behind the flop making for a awkward turn. My action on the flop is my biggest problem by far with this play, a c-bet most of the time is probably not far from optimal. If your opponent calls your reraise AND your c-bet its time to give up most of the time. Offcourse if you have a awesome read that he might be playing back at you light, a two barrel bluff might be warranted, this is extremely risky territory however and should be ventured in with EXTREME caution.


I’m still not completely done about this stuff, and there’s a lot I don’t like yet (mostly postflop, I’m lost to often) so I really really need feedback. So lets hear it!!

[JackAll]

I normally add suited connectors only when their pfr is high or their blind steal range is high. It isn't that much of a range to add, so you can continue to c-bet as usual and take it down on the flop.

And if you check the flop in a rrz'd pot, then do you want to do this with AA/KK/AK also? I think you lose a lot of value. But then again, they usually fold, so I've wondered about checking any flop with an A on it. I would still c-bet a non A flop.

I'm not really sure about pairs though. A fair few people advocate 3-betting from the blinds with all pairs after button raises and I never was sure that was a good move either. We're oop and what do you do with 22-TT on the flop when you miss a set?