If you want to survive in a no limit texas holdem game, you are going to need to know how to steal the blinds.
What makes it effective to steal blinds?
Stealing the blinds can be an effective way of staying in the game longer than anticipated. The blinds are posted on each round and include a big blind and a small blind in conjunction with the tables limits. The whole purpose of which is to initiate the betting rounds and get chips on the table.
This means that two players at the table will have placed their chips on the table before receiving any cards. The idea behind stealing blinds is to play in such a way that you can get those two players to fold allowing you to take their chips. This can be extremely helpful to you as when the blinds come round you almost get a free go.
So how do we accomplish this? A lot depends on your position and different strategies are put in place according to where you are sat in relation to the blinds. The first thing we need is a reasonable starting hand, this ensures that if we do get called or raised we at least have a little back up plan. Once your sat with some nice cards and decide to go for the blinds we look at where we are at the table.
If you are sat in an early position e.g. just after the blinds then bet more than the minimum, & don´t steal blinds from early position too often, if your sat in the middle positions then bet twice the minimum, if your in a late position there are two plays, as you have already seen everybody play their respective turns you may have some bets on the table, using your knowledge of the players you are playing you must work out the risk factor of trying to steal the blinds, if however the table has mainly folded then you can step in and put a nice big bet/raise, and unless the players in the blinds have managed to get good cards they will usually drop and fold.
The Idea behind stealing blinds:
The whole idea behind stealing the blinds is to strengthen your stack and to take chips out of other players stacks. This tactic is especially good when you have less chips than the two players in the blinds as they may not be too worried about dropping a few chips here and there. This tactic also helps in tournaments, as the blinds get bigger and bigger as the rounds go on, stealing them can make a huge difference to you staying in the competition long enough to get in the money, this gets even more so later on as the ante is introduced so you effectively take chips from everyone.
You should not overuse this tactic as players will wise up to what you are doing, the other reason is that occasionally you will come up against an opponent that has a top pair for his pocket cards and as you make your raise he calls you into a flop putting you on the back foot and vulnerable. As a general rule of thumb just be very selective of the blinds you try to steal.
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Tags: blindstealing, stealing blinds
