Stealing Blinds
When you become a good poker player and play against other good players, poker becomes a game of who can steal the most blinds. You should be aiming to win at about 5 big bets per 100 hands. This means that you want to win 10 big blinds every 100 hands while you are playing. It isn’t hard to win a few hands here and there to make this happen, but being able to steal the blinds successfully will definitely make that much easier and make for a much higher win rate than you would have otherwise. This is one of the most basic no limit hold’em tips you can get!
Since stealing the blinds is so important in poker we have come up with a list of the top five tips for stealing blinds. You need to make sure that you are stealing blinds effectively or else you are just bringing your win rate down because you are losing money this way. This set of tips will easily be one of the best set of cash game tips that you will ever get. Once you see how great stealing the blinds is you will realize this.
Top Five Tips for Stealing Blinds
- Late Position – You will only be stealing the blinds from the button (dealer) or in the cutoff (1 before the dealer). You want to know the player type you are up against before you start stealing from them. This is because you are guaranteed to have position on your opponents and there are only 2 opponents left to compete with you for the blinds. Your chances of being successful stealing in late position as opposed to stealing in early position are much higher. Knowing the types of hands to raise with against specific players will help win you more money when you are contested. You are donating money by trying to steal the blinds in any other positions. Be sure that you are only exercising stealing blinds when you are in correct position on your opponents.
- Tight Blinds – When the players you are stealing blinds from are tight players you need to be stealing with good drawing hands. Suited connectors are best against these opponents. When they do decide to compete with you for their blinds you will have a better chance of getting their stack when you both make a hand and your hand is a suited connector that makes flushes and straights when they are more likely to compete with high card hands which make top pair top kicker types of hands. You not only have good expected value in stealing against these opponents because they fold so often, but the hands you are raising with make hands that their range loses to.
- Loose Blinds – Since your blinds are loose you will not be stealing all that often. You still need to make sure that you are stealing the blinds though. When you are doing this your opponents are more likely to call with weak hands that make second pair weak kicker and draw types of hands. Since this is the case you need to be raising with hands like QT and K9 etc. These hands can make top pair medium kicker which will get much more value out of these opponents when they call. You are not looking to get their whole stack in these situations, but you can definitely value bet a good amount and get plenty of calls from them. Once you go to show down and beat these opponents a few times they should start giving you their blinds more often.
- Table Image – A big thing that you need to think about when you might make a steal attempt is your current table image. No one likes to get bullied. If you have won a few hands already before it comes time that you could steal you should probably let it go. You don’t want to be in a position where it looks like you are bullying the table because then your steal attempts get contested more often because players question your credibility.
- Attack Attack – You will sometimes see that the players in the blinds will simply refuse to contest you from stealing their blinds. When you realize this about an opponent this is a signal that you need to take charge and start stealing almost every hand. You need to be playing aggressive poker. If they aren’t going to try to stop you from taking their blinds then it’s better for you. The more blinds you steal the higher your win rate is. These players are making the mistake of letting you take their blinds over and over again, so punish them by not only continuing to steal their blinds, but increasing how often you do so.
You can get some practice at stealing blinds by playing at PokerStars. Right now you can sign up for an account at PokerStars using our TOP FIVE POKER PokerStars MARKETING CODE PSP1458 and receive a 100% on up to $500 first time sign up bonus. This is completely free money just for playing at the world’s largest online poker room.
