POKER SKILLS: STEALING BLINDS

Multi Table Tournament Blind Stealing
by Scott Paterson

First, let me clarify what I mean by blind stealing.
I’m talking about a pure steal. Raising someone’s
blind with a marginal hand, or any two cards hoping
they’ll fold and confrontation can be avoided.

Certain criteria must be met in order to successfully pull this off:

1. You should only be doing this in the middle/late stages
of the tournament when the blinds are higher. Blind stealing
is pointless early on because the starting pot is so small.
The negative consequences of "getting caught" and losing
a chunk of your stack early on far outweigh the positive effects
of winning a small pot early on. In the middle stages of the
tournament you’ll want a decent hand to back you up.
In the late stages of the tournament, or if you’re short stacked
you may need to make this move with any two cards.
Also, a great time to steal blinds is right before the final table
as players tighten up hoping to survive and avoid being eliminated
or losing a bunch of chips.

2. You should only be stealing from players you’ve identified
as tighter players. Prime candidates are people that play
one or two hands per table revolution, and players that
don’t defend their blinds against raises. Pay close attention
to the three people seated on your left (these are your potential
victims because you’ll be in late position when these people
are in the blinds). Who is folding a lot of hands?
Who isn’t defending their blinds against raises?
You’ll want to lean on these people hard.

3. You should usually only try this from late position
when everyone has folded to you, or a limited number
of people have limped in front of you.
First, if you raise the blinds from late position and
one of the blinds call your raise you may have the
opportunity to steal the pot after the flop because
you have position on them.
Second, if you try this from early/middle position
someone behind you could easily pick up a hand
and reraise, a short stack could move all in, or a big stack
with a speculative hand could call your raise with the
intention of stealing the pot from you after the flop.
Finally, the ideal time to try this move is when everyone
has folded to you, or there have been a limited number of
callers in front of you. As the number of callers in front of
you increases the chance you will get backraised increases
(someone in front of you might have limped in with a very
strong hand counting on you to raise behind them).
The "usually" stems from the fact that if you are shortstacked,
or it’s late in the tournament (the blinds are very high and
they come around very quickly) you might want to try this
from any position.