Poker Tournaments

How to Steal the Blind in Free Poker Tournaments

November 24, 2009 at 6:37 am | In Uncategorized | No Comments
Tags: free online poker, free poker, free poker online, free poker tournaments

Theory has it, that if you were to enter a free poker tournament at a no limit table and manage to steal the blinds just one time when the deal button rounds the table, that you could win the tourney. This is even though you have never raked in a huge pot.

I do not recommend this approach in your next free poker tournament, but it certainly makes a case for the importance of stealing the blinds. Lets breakdown exactly what stealing the blinds means and when the play should be used.

In short, stealing the blinds is defined as making a pre-flop raise that is designed to induce folds and win the hand pre-flop. When making this move the value of your hole cards is of no importance. You do not intend to see a flop and when successful all players remaining in the hand will fold.

A raise in late position with AQs that induces folds may have the same affect, but it is certainly not the same play.

Since our goal is to induce folds there are several things we must consider before pushing a raise across the line.

What is my position?
Has anybody else called the big blind pre-flop?
Are there many big blinds left in the stack
How healthy are the stacks of those left to act?
What is my image at the table?

Any attempt to steal the blinds should be made from late (preferably last) position; this gives us the advantage of seeing how everyone else plays pre-flop before we decide to steal.

Generally we will only want to attack those players in the blinds as their money was in before they got a look at their cards. It is acceptable to make a play for the blinds against 1 (maximum of 2) calls, but only if those calls were made by players who have played loose all night.

It is never okay to try a steal when there is a raise in front of you! Let’s assume we are sitting on the button (last to act), there is one call (by a loose player) and the rest of the table has folded.

We must now determine if our chip stack will allow us to make a move on the blinds. The intent of our raise is to take away any equity in the pot and make the only smart play for the blinds a fold, but our stack must be adequate enough to afford to do so.

In our hand there is a small and big blind in the pot and we have 1 caller. Using $100 / $200 blinds as an example the pot is now at $500. In order to take the equity out of the pot for anyone considering a call we must raise at least 3 times the big blind.

Many players still see a 3x raise as standard, however I have found a raise of 3.5 or 4.5 to be extremely effective (3x = 600, 3.5x=700, 4.5x=900).

Ideally we would like to have 30X the big blind or more left in our stack after we make the raise (30x=6,000), so our chip stack of 8,000 will allow us to attempt the steal in this position.

Note that this play is much more effective when your image at the table is that of a tight player that raises with solid hands.

As with all poker, whether you are playing free poker tournaments or casino poker live, its all about patience. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, another player will always have a better hand. Stealing the blind can be an effective method at times and gives you an opportunity to hold out for premium hands.