Pokerwiner.com → Within poker principles
4.Trying, with garbage hands, to steal the blinds of skilled, aggressive players, or mediocre, tenacious callers:
When better players make this mistake it is often the result of an inaccurate judgment. They misjudge either the long run profit to be made from attempting to steal a tight, but skilled player’s blind, or the edge they posses over a mediocre tenacious caller, despite their weak poker hand.
When you try to steal an expert player’s blind you will probably find that you succeed more often than you do against weak players. This is because weak players tend to defend their blinds too liberally. But the question you should ask yourself is whether; over many steal attempts with weak hands such as
You have a positive expectation (i.e. you will profit) against the expert. The problem you may run into his that the occasions when the expert does defend will cost you more than the blinds you successfully steal from him. When he defends, his starting hand will often be better than yours, he defends, his starting hand will often be better than yours, and he will make few errors, and may consistently outplay you. If this is so, then trying to steal his blinds with marginal hands is going to cost you money.
My observation is that some reasonably good online poker players do not seem to have thought this through. When you try with very weak hands to steal the blinds of a mediocre player who will almost always defend, the situation is different. The problem here is that unless he plays very badly after the flop, such that your edge on him is then quite pronounced, you are lowering your overall expectation by investing two bets in your below average starting hands. You would be better off simply limping with some of the weaker hands that you deem strong enough to play against him.
When you factor is similarly tenacious small blind who will often call as well, you need to increase your starting standards and raise even less. (* These are basically hands like Q5s or T8s hands that will usually not flop anything but ought to make decent money against poor players when they do.
) By constantly raising the blinds of such players you merely dilute your profits. Notice as well, that by demonstrating to such players that you are completely unselective in your steal attempts you reinforce their conviction to defend every time. If you are a little more selective, they may decide to defend less often, an outcome you prefer with most of the weaker blind stealing hands.
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Conjecture on the Limits of Tell Detectability
Quick Indicators / Afterthought