Printable View
I was just checking my LP play last night, looking at blind defense and stealing. Thought of these two classics from Spoonitnow:
Blind Stealing 101
Raising Behind Limpers
They were posted a day apart and go together. The raising behind limpers relies on the math and theory developed in the first one. I'll add some thought questions later today. Enjoy!!
Good picks Robb, I think if you play 6-max like I do then blind stealing becomes even more important. Since you haven't posted the discussion questions yet I'll just list some of the reasons that I feel stealing blinds/raising limpers is so important and other things to remember from his posts:
-We get to play more pots in position when we start raising lighter from the CO and BU.
-It helps our overall image (makes us appear looser) when we raise more in LP and our big hands will get paid off more often.
-When we have two tight players to our left then it becomes very profitable to steal their blinds because of how often it is successful.
Also:
-We don't always have to raise, sometimes limping behind with a hand that has lots of implied odds is best.
-Having reads on opponents is key: Try to figure out exactly what types of hands a player is limping or what types of hands he is 3-betting your steal from the blinds with.
-Stealing/raising limpers also sets up a profitable c-bet.
Couple things I have questions about:
In spoon's example on blind stealing he assumes that we make a raise of 4x the bb for our steal and goes on the calculate the expectation of the steal if we know how often our opponents fold. If we assume that our opponents won't adjust that much to our opening size, then why not raise less and risk less to win the same amount in blinds? If I have two 9/6 nits to my left then I feel like they're going to fold to a 3x raise almost as often as a 4x raise. I've also been reading a little bit about people that like to min raise steal from the button. Anyone ever try this?
If we're raising often from the CU and BU and c-betting a large % of the time then I would think it would be crucial to do the exact same thing when we actually have a strong hand and not try to slow play??