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Smarter blind stealing in tournament poker

If you play a decent amount of tournament poker, chance are you’ll often find yourself with a stack ranging from 8-25 BBs (big blinds) when the tournament has gotten down to about 20% of the starting field. When you are in this spot, there are two questions you absolutely need to know the answer to. If you’re closer to the 8BB end of the range, the critical question is: “What is my best spot for stealing the blinds?” As you move toward the 25BB, the critical question to answer becomes: “What is my best spot for three-betting light?”

Answering these questions is a reflex for successful tournament players, but newer players and intermediate players often fail to realize that evaluating the table dynamic thoroughly is essentially the only way (save getting pretty lucky) that you can transform a shorter stack into a stack that can compete for the win. To put it more succinctly: if you don’t pick up some pots uncontested with a 10-25BB stack as the bubble approaches, you’re going to need a ton of luck to make the money, let alone make the final table.

In this two-part article, we’ll break down the factors that will allow you to hopefully generate the best answer to each question. We’re not going to discuss hand strength in detail – this isn’t an article that will tell you to push X hand in Y spot. Instead, we’re going to try and define the most optimal spots for blind stealing and light three betting regardless of cards. Part one focuses on the question of stealing blinds, and part two will tackle the question of three betting.

This article assumes you’re at a stage of the tournament where antes have kicked in. If they haven’t, or if you’re playing a tournament without antes, you should just adjust all of your assumptions in a more conservative direction to compensate for the decreased reward (i.e., the smaller starting pot size).

WHAT’S MY BEST SPOT FOR STEALING THE BLINDS?
When you have a stack of 8BBs – 13BBs, your number one concern has to be identifying optimal spots for stealing the blinds. What distinguishes a good spot from a bad spot? There are a few key factors to consider.

Number of players to act behind
This one’s pretty simple on the surface: The more players to act behind you, the greater the chance that someone will wake up with a hand willing to call you. Let’s say you somehow know for certain that everyone at the table will only call with 99+ and AQ+. That’s roughly 5% of all possible hands. If you raise first to act at a nine handed table, that leaves 8 players still to act, meaning you’ll get called about 40% of the time (the actual number is a bit lower, but this is close enough for our discussion). If you raise from the button with only two players to act, you’re only getting called 10% of the time. That gap is huge, and seems to suggest that the later you raise, the better your chance for success.

Unfortunately, real poker tables don’t behave quite as neatly as our hypothetical one. For one thing, the earlier a raise is, the more respect it commands (generally speaking), and the more pressure it places on players on your immediate left, as they have to worry about all of the players still to act. Raises from the button and the cutoff have become so standard that players are calling those raises with a much wider range than top 5%.

There’s also the critical issue of opportunity. While later position raises may seem more favorable, the later you are the more likely it is that someone will open the pot in front of you. If you’re looking to steal the blinds, you (with very few exceptions) want to be the first player in the pot.

So, to summarize: early position brings with it the advantages of being able to represent strength and a greater opportunity to open the pot, but the disadvantage of a significantly larger chance of being called by a strong hand. Later position raises have the advantage of a smaller chance of being called by a strong hand, but the disadvantages of fewer opportunities to open the pot and less ability to represent strength.

Opponent tendencies
This is a fairly straightforward factor. Against tighter opponents, your steal has a greater chance of success; against looser opponents, your steal has a lower chance of success.

Of particular interest to you are the tendencies of your opponents in the blinds. These are the spots that are generally going to give the most thought to calling you with the broadest range, not only because they already have money invested, but because they either get to close the action in the BB or have only one more player to worry about behind in the SB. Their tendencies should, generally speaking, trump your considerations of the tendencies of the other players still to act – so, if you’re two seats off the button and are considering stealing, you’d rather have loose players on the cutoff and button and tight players in the blinds than tight players in the cutoff and button and loose players in the blinds.

Another thing to consider about your opponents is their recent activity. While tendencies certainly vary by player, I’ve found that opponents with smaller to average stacks who just won a pot are less likely to get involved without a hand, while larger stacked opponents who just lost a hand are more likely to get involved. Again, these are broad generalizations that vary wildly by buy in level, so make a point of paying attention to how players at your level seem to react immediately after winning or losing a pot.

So, to summarize: Tighter opponents make for more successful steals, especially if your opponents in the blinds are tight.

Stack sizes
It’s my opinion that the best stack size to steal against when you’re a short stack is a stack in the 25-30BB range. When you have a larger stack, these types of stacks are less attractive targets because of their ability to three bet you, but when you’re short, you’re usually putting most or all of your stack in preflop, so the threat of a three bet is moot.

Why 25-30BBs? These stacks exist at a nice intersection for your steal attempt. They’re small enough that they can’t call your raises lightly, as they’re be committing a third to half of their stack, and they’re large enough that your opponents won’t be feeling much pressure to get involved in a hand. That’s two strong factors that (generally) are going to limit your opponent’s calling range to very strong hands. Smaller stacks will be more in tune with your small stack mindset, making them more likely to assign you a wide range, and will be feeling the pressure of the blinds and antes, making them more likely to commit with a wider range. As stacks move north of 30BBs, players become more willing to gamble, especially if they’re in the BB. Take a typical scenario in the late stages of a tournament where the blinds are 500 / 1000 with 100 antes. Let’s say you have 9k in the CO and the BB has 36k. The table folds to you and you raise. The button and SB fold.

How does this look from the BB’s perspective? They’re looking at calling 8k more to win your 9k plus the 2500 or so already in the pot, so they’re getting almost 1.5-1, and if they call and lose, they’ll still have a healthy stack. That’s a recipe for a wide calling range.

Again, the critical players to pay attention to are the blinds. The stacks in between you and blinds are certainly relevant, but the players most likely to call your raise light are almost always the blinds. The exception to that rule is when you have an exceedingly large or short stack in between you and the blinds.

In a nutshell: Look for medium-sized stacks to steal against, and if you can’t find those, prefer shorter stacks to larger stacks.

Miscellaneous Factors
In addition to the above, you should also consider your image (tighter is better for raising light), what stage the tournament is at (your raises will probably get more respect from short and medium stacks if you’re near the bubble but far less respect from bigger stacks), the buy in level (the higher the buy in, the more likely that players in the blinds will call you properly, which is to say with a wider range) and, of course, your cards (even though you’re stealing, it’s still nice to have some backup).

Summary
When you find yourself in a tournament with a dwindling stack, you need to turn your attention immediately to identifying your best opportunities to steal the blinds. While there’s no absolute formula for picking an optimal spot, a thorough consideration of the above factors will help you move beyond the blunt strategy of simply hoping the table folds to you in late position.

In the next part of the article, we’ll look at how these factors (along with some others) can be used to help you identify the best spots for three betting light preflop.

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