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The When, How, and Why of Blind Stealing

Since making money playing poker isn’t all about hitting huge hands, it’s important to know about some techniques that will help you pick up small pots. One of the most critical of these is blind stealing.

Blind stealing is pretty simple. What exactly is it? It’s exactly what it sounds like. Raising into an opponent’s blinds in hopes of them folding. Some beginners have trouble believing that this is profitable- after all, when you win, it’s usually only 1 or 1.5 BB’s. If you get raised though, you could lose your 3 BB’s. Why go through the effort for such a small return?

Introduction to Floating

The idea behind floating is pretty simple. The theory is that aggressive players raise a lot preflop, and miss the flop more often than they hit it. Therefore, an opponent who c-bets often tends to be bluffing a lot of the time. Floating is simply calling an opponent’s c-bet on the flop, in position, with the intent to steal the pot on a later street (usually the turn).

Floating is a technique best used against players with at least some strategic skill. Against total beginners, it’s useless. However once you start running into TAGs and more generally aggressive players, you’ll find that floating is an effective tool that can be used to defend against over-aggression.

The Blocking Bet

If you’ve read through all of the Pokkercards strategy articles, you realize what an important role position plays in poker strategy. Playing in late position is awesome, while playing in early position, quite frankly, SUCKS! Although having a crappy hand in early position is bad, it gets worse- having a marginal hand in early position. What the heck do you do with one of those?

Playing 3-bet Pots As The Aggressor

Are you afraid of 3-bet pots? Most poker players are. It’s tough to play a solid game in the face of aggression. Nobody really knows how to handle it. Usually the 3-bet phobia stems from a simple lack of experience in aggressive situations. If you want to gain a significant edge on your opponents, you can- by learning how to master 3-bet pots.

Preventing Tilt

A good start to preventing tilt is getting into the right playing mindset. Make sure you’re in a comfortable place when you play. Not too comfortable, though. A place that encourages work. No television, no video games, no distractions. Think of poker as your job- you need a place to do your job, so make one.

Get rid of all outside distractions. If you have a dog, close your office door. If you have a wife, divorce her. Okay, don’t do that. But tell anyone who might need you during your poker time to save it for later- you’re working.

Don’t Leak Money - Don’t Tilt

You know from learning about postflop play that much of your profit comes from exploiting tilting players. The reverse can be true if you aren’t careful- other players could profit off of your tilt. How do you like the sound of that? You probably don’t. If you don’t mind the thought, stop reading here. You aren’t a poker player, you’re a gambler. No use learning strategy in that case. If you want to leak-proof your game however, read on. Strengthen your mind and watch your strategy become impenetrable.

Why tilt costs you money:

Playing the Odds - Playing Profitably with Basic Math

Many poker players forget why they play poker- to make a profit. It’s easy to get caught up in winning and losing, streaks and ruts, big hands and great moments. But amidst all the excitement, some lose sight of the fact that they need to play a fundamentally sound game in order to consistently win. Poker, like many games of chance, can be reduced to mathematical expressions and calculations with relative ease. Give a skilled player the basic picture of a hand you’ve played at some point in your career, and he can tell you exactly what your expected value was on all streets of play. In other words, he can tell you, mathematically, whether or not you should have won, whether or not you played to maximize your profit, and whether or not you could have done anything differently. All because of math.

Implied Odds - Winning Big With More Math

More math. If pot odds haven’t convinced you that math is your friend, implied odds surely will. Especially when playing no-limit forms of poker, a player wants to be very conscious of his implied odds at all times, seeing as they will dictate exactly how much value can be extracted from a given situation at all points in a hand.

Like pot odds, implied odds deal with the ratio of potential winnings to investment. However unlike pot odds, implied odds consider potential winnings on all future streets in a hand, instead of just one. Why is this important?

Playing loose-aggressive or LAG

Continued from last post, playing LAG is another strategy advice that high-stakes players should ignore in microstakes games.

Tons of high-stakes guys advocate a LAG style of play. Basically, LAG style dictates that a player should loosen his preflop range from all positions, and should overwhelm opponents with pure aggression. This is a good strategy against weak-tight players. However, lots of microstakes players find themselves getting sucked into the trap of overdoing LAG against loose-passive or weak-passive players. This can be a huge leak, and can cut into profits significantly.

High Stakes Advice to Ignore in Microstakes Games

A lot of players like to look up to high-stakes players for strategy advice. There’s nothing wrong with that per se. However, there is a fine line between taking advice into consideration, and misapplying it. As a player, you must always remember to tailor your strategy to the types of opponents you will be playing. I’m sure you can imagine the skill difference between a high-stakes pro, and a gambler at 25NL.

Whenever you read strategy, you need to take into consideration who it was meant for. Advanced metagame concepts aren’t going to apply to basic games full of non-thinking players. Here are a few strategy items in particular that you should be weary of applying to the lower limits.