PokerBlind Stealing in Tournaments
Here we will take a look at one of the most important, but unexplored skills in tournaments. For the purposes of this article we will assume antes are not in play, as they generally aren’t on Paddy Power Poker. If you find yourself in a tournament with antes remember there is always an extra reward for stealing the blinds than normal. Your stack will also dwindle at an increased rate.
One of the reasons tournaments are so popular is that the game changes drastically throughout the tournament. If you are lucky enough to win the tournament, you can look back and see that there are at least three clearly defined passages in which the play is very different.
There is the early stage where the blinds are low. Play tends to be quite loose, and there isn’t much point in attempting to steal the blinds, for their own stake anyway. If you have 100blinds, taking down a pot and getting to 101.5bb makes very little difference to your chance of success.
Then there is the middle stage. Play tends to tighten up drastically, as the average stack dwindles to between 15 and 40 times the bb, depending on the structure. If you have 20 blinds, then adding on 1.5bbs (which is the small blind and the big blind, or all the dead money in an unopened pot) does make a difference to your chance of success. Should you go card dead and not win a pot for 3 orbits, you will go from 20bbs to 16.5. That’s a decrease of 17 and a half percent.
At the 20bb mark, each blind that is won or lost will change your stack by 5%. So its easy to see that those players that manage to take more than their fair share at this stage in the tournament will have vastly improved results over those that let their cards do the talking.
There are several crucial factors that have to be taken into account when deciding whether to attempt to steal the blinds or not.
Your Image The tighter your image the more respect your opponents will show you. If you have shown down a bad hand recently your opponents will loosen up both their calling range and their reraising range. Unless you have a monster this is a bad thing. Always take your image into account. You also need to take into account your last few actions. Have you raised in a hand recently?
Your Position The later position you are in, the less players there are off of whom could have a real hand. When you raise Under The Gun (UTG) at a nine handed table, there are eight players to act after you, all of whom could have aces or kings. By the time it’s folded to you on the button, there are only two players who haven’t acted yet. However there is a flip side to that, the earlier position you raise from, the more respect your raise will be shown. A raise UTG demands a lot more respect than a button raise. This effect is smaller than the positional disadvantage, but shouldn’t be ignored. It also leads to the strange situation where the cutoff is considered by many to be the “sweet spot” to raise from.
The stack size of the players in the blinds If this is very small, 4 or less, many players will play with any two cards. So you should only raise with hands you are happy to show down, and that will perform well against a random hand. Raising with suited connectors here will not only damage your image, but is usually slight -EV. If you are sure of being called, raising is nearly always less profitable than when there is the chance of winning without a showdown.
When the players stack is bigger, from around 5 to 10 blinds, then from a game theory point of view its a perfect opportunity to steal someone’s blind. They can still fold and play on, but if they reraise all in they know that you are almost certainly going to call. This means that they can only push hands they figure to be beating most of your range, and they also are certain to risk their tournament. That is, of course, if they play rationally, which is sometimes not the case.
Once the players stack gets over 10 blinds, but below 20, they will be able to reraise you all in and know that you need a relatively good hand to call with. So be wary of raising an aggressive player with this stack size, unless you plan to call their all in. They will realise they have a certain amount of folding equity, and also that with their stack winning the pot pre–flop is a great outcome for them. With their short stack they have nothing to fear!
As a player’s stack gets bigger than 20 blinds, it gets increasingly less profitable for them to reraise all in with a weaker hand, so you should raise with a higher frequency. This is because there is no way for a player with 20 blinds to reraise without committing himself to the pot. So when he makes it 9bb to go (After your raise to 3bb), he is actually betting his entire 20bb stack to win only 4.5. This is clearly less profitable than with a slightly smaller stack.
The personality of the players in the blinds The tighter and more passive the players in the blinds, the better the chance you have of winning without a showdown. Some players simply refuse to give up their blinds. Some will happily fold without much consideration.
The Bubble No article on blind stealing would be complete without mentioning the bubble. It pays to be aware at all stages how close you are to the money, and how that will affect peoples play. Some players, going for the win, get more aggressive near the bubble. Some get scared and play ultra-passively. Of course it makes sense to attack the later group, and call more liberally against the first.
And finally, you need to take into account your own hand. There is always the slim chance that you won’t be reraised, or win without a showdown. When the stacks are shallow it’s often better to have a high card, like A2 or K2, as these hands run well hot and cold. You will often win unimproved. If the stacks are bigger, hands like 78s or KTo are better because its easier to flop big with them! However the other considerations listed above are often more important than your own hand.
Best of luck in the next tournament you play!