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CONSIDERATIONS IN TWO BLIND STEALING/DEFENSE SITUATIONS
I write this essay with those of you in mind who are trying to move up to the middle limits. Relative to small games, in middle limit holdem ring games you will find yourself more often in blind stealing situations, playing hands out heads-up against a blind, or against the player who tried to steal your blind.
Thus it is important to your success that you become fluent in negotiating these situations. For general starting hand guidelines both for stealing and defending blinds, I refer you to Holdem Poker for Advanced Players: 21st Century Edition. Its guidelines are correct and quite usable. With a little additional thought about the relative merits of high cards versus smaller suited cards in these spots, you should be off to a good start in knowing what hands to play. I would caution, as well, against trying to adopt guidelines which may differ dramatically from those in Sklansky and Malmuth’s book. On the Internet, for example, I have seen some extremely liberal starting standards, derived from computer simulations, suggested for these situations.
If you start defending your blind, for example, with hands such as Q4 and 73, as I have seen advocated, you will be throwing your money away. Below I will detail two common situation, one involving a steal attempt, the other a defense of the bigs blinds. For each situation, there is no one universally correct way to play. Rather, there are multiple factors you must consider in order to make your decision. Accordingly, though there is a most common play for each of these situations when viewed across all opponents, I will emphasize not what you should usually do, but what you should think about. I will provide a sampling of factors. By no means do the considerations I list exhaust all the possibilities. They are merely some highlights. However, not all of the elements I list in each situation will be important in a given real life hand against a specific opponent. Some might be. While at the same time factors completely different from those I mention, will often loom large.
This essay also points to the situational nature of poker etiquette. Because multiply variables interact in a hand, two situations which appear similar at first glance may, upon deeper analysis, point to completely different decisions. In fact, one of my purposes in writing this essay is to show how many considerations can be involved in what appear on the surface to be simple, routine poker situations. It is not enough simply to ask something like, “What hand did I make? Is it worth a bet?” In fact, as I suspect even partial list snows, there are often too many potentially relevant variables in a hand to account for all of them in the decision making process. At the same time, to ignore important factors will cost you money. A key, therefore, is to try to identify the elements of greater importance. Work on your ability to zero in on those factors. I list the main categories under each situation in roughly the order you might think of them at the table. In reality though, it is an artificial separation, as the thought process actually tends to take place more as a whole.
Situation No 1: You raise, hoping to steal the blinds from a late position.
The big blind calls. The flop misses you.
The big blind will now either bet or check. (On rare occasions he will simply muck his cards. It’s a bad play on his part, and is a sign that your image is good.) First, suppose he bets. What should you do? You will often have to fold, but there are plenty of exceptions. A number of considerations must go into your decision:
1. The pot not contains about 5½ small bets. You will be getting 5½-to-1 on call or 5½-to-2 (2¾-to-1) on a raise. These pot odds along with your 3estimated chance of stealing the pot, as well as implied odds if you have any significant outs, should inform your decision. (Of course depending on how many outs you have it might no longer be accurate to say you “missed.”)
2. You must of course consider the cards. In what way did you miss the flop? Say you raise with
And the flop comes
The Strategic Moment in Holdem / One Way Not to Fold /
Beating the Berserko: Preflop Against a Maniac /
On Into the Storm: Playing the maniac After the Flop
One Reason to Reraise a Maniac / A Simple Read / Countering a Good Reader
Thinking About What They’re Thinking / Out On the Edge
Considerations in Two Blind Stealing Defense situations
Easing the Transition to the middle Limits: Part I
Easing the Transition to the middle Limits: Part II / Multiple Changing Images