Stealing and then C-betting

I've been noticing that I'm getting called a lot more lately on steals, even when I'm only showing down good hands. I'm pretty sure this is due to the constant advice to "steal more/c-bet more".

I am a tight stealer. I probably don't steal enough, but I really don't see any money in it. It seems like everyone is calling steals very light anymore and either donk betting pot sized or shoving flops with any pair, leaving you not many options. My stats for the last 23k hands are below. Can someone look this over and tell me what is going wrong? Or is stealing overrated now, and should we be starting to look for only good stealing opportunities?

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Bad table selection?

It helps a lot to have nits in the blinds.

Yeah if you cant steal you need to move!

Table selection is something that I've been trying to work on recently. But what is the best way to do this if you don't know any of the players at the table. And I'm sure it doesn't help that I play micros (not a lot of nits there).

But what should I be looking for before joining a table?

Steal lots in position and if the blinds dont roll over and play dead, find another table!

Ok, that makes sense. I was misunderstanding when people would talk about table selection. I thought they were observing the tables and then deciding whether to join or not. I thought this odd, because most tables, especially micros, will fill up in a matter of seconds.

Here's another quick table selection question:

When searching for a table in micros (6max 1c/2c), which one would be better and why?

Table A: 5 players, avg. pot- $.15c, Players per flop- 42%, 80 hands/hr

Table B: 5 players, avg. pot- $.42c, Players per flop- 35%, 85 hands/hr

Table C: 5 players, avg. pot- $.1.15, Players per flop- 30%, 77 hands/hr

btw, thanks for the answers so far.

"Nits" was probably the wrong word. The micros is basically a mix of weak tight players, calling stations and maniacs. It's the weak tight players you want on your left.

Most of the weak tight players seem to know that they should be even tighter in the blinds and just give up their blinds without a fight if they have a less than premium hand.

I don't play enough cash games to know anything about stealing but I do play quite a few sitngoes and I have noticed too that even in the micro sitngoes that people are calling a lot more often to steal attempts later in tournaments. I think I might be due to the fact that everyone is learning the same or almost the same strategy and maybe assuming the other players are playing the same way. Just imagine if you knew the other peoples strategy at the table you would have a major advantage. Simply because it would give you an I idea of what kind of hands they would be playing

They should be 3-betting more not calling.

Table A has the loosest players pf, prob has short stacks, and the players are probably not aggressive.

Table C has some loose players, one or more of the players are prob agg, and there are prob fewer shortstacks than table A.

I hate playing w ss's and love playing w aggs - I tend to go for table C cuz it suits my playing style. Table A is frequently more profitable, though, if it's not loaded w ss's, since you should be able to run over people postflop. I think it's a little style dependent, but the recommendation is usually to choose table A (you can be the agg who builds the pots).

I think Sly is right about the optimal table being style dependent. I tend to go for highest VPIP first and then pot size second. Since at I want more people getting into more hands where they can make more bad decisions.

I'm a FR player though, so its limpfest at the micros. At FR I'd say stealing is usless in 2 and 5nl. I skipped 10(played 5 deep instead), and you can rape people's blinds with good table selection at 25nl+. At the 2 and 5nl tables I found it much more worth it to just take advantage of poor postflop play playing deep, rather than battling over the blinds. The deep stacks stacking off light will more than make up for the steal monies.

IveGot0uts is right, as a microstakes player with 150k hands at 2c/5c and 1c/2c i would chose table C, dont try to steal blinds too much, just not worthed at microstakes, wait for the hand, where you hit at least 2 pair on the flop and make the aggressive player pay. dont be afraid to bet big, almost pot. with an average pot size of 1.15$, with a big pair, AA KK and even QQ its best to try and get it all in preflop if posible.

Blind stealing is always worth it.

If they fold a lot then it's immediately proffitable, if they don't then just play a really wide value range against the blinds. Good players will mostly fold or 3bet (at micros, good players fold), but they will let you steal a lot because the disadvantage of playing blind vs button is so great.
Good play from the blinds is folding a lot. Bad play is calling to defend your blind (which is exactly what people at $2nl and $5nl do).

The only reason you don't want players in the blinds who wont fold is because they wont fold the rest of the time either which means you've got to be tight in the CO.


Blind stealing is something fundamental that should be standard for any cash game player in any game. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

If your finding the blinds calling your steal change the bet size you use and see what impact that has. Clearly a minraise is more likely to be called, but do they call 3bb, 4bb, 5bb? maybe vary your steal sizes in relation to your hand strength if they are calling 100% then any A is going to be dominating their range. If they call 60% then adjust accordingly. Calling superwide in the Blinds and raising all the time is hugely exploitable. If they call 100%of the time in the blinds and raise 100% after the call then adjust your range to a little stronger hands and they will ease up on that action once you have called their spew down.

I could be wrong about this but I'm about 90% sure that the most unexploitable blind stealing size is 2bb, although 3bb works well too.

The reason for this is that if you're raising to 5bb and get 3bet to 15bb, it's a lot harder for you to call and light 3betting becomes a very effective tool against you. If your raise is to 2bb it's still a huge mistake for them to call (their mistake is a lot more than the pre-flop call, it's post-flop that will cost them) and if they 3bet you then they can either make a very large raise (which means you can fold a lot for every time that you play back) or they raise to 3x/4x which is a maximum of 8bb which is definately a number that you can call fairly light, and the times that you do fold you're only going to lose 2bb.
Consider also that the blinds can't 3bet you very wide, even light 3betting only works as long as their range is still strong (i.e. their 3bet frequency is low). They simply can't proffitably defend very often, regardless of your bet size. So keep your blind steals small.

What I'm saying is to if you are getting 3bet light by your steals, or if you getting called light then increasing the size of your steals with slightly better hands is better, additionally if your getting called 100% with a 2BB steal bump the price and see if the % goes down any noticeable ampount. If they call 5BB steal 5% then you found a winner- essentially find an adjustment that works against your light caller donk betting opponent and stick with it

Thats only half the story.

If someone is calling your steals light or 3 betting light then certainly increase the raise size, but also increase the hand value (i.e steal less but value bet lighter)

If someone is putting you in an awkward post flop situation by calling steals light, dont just increase the steal size because if they make no adjustment you are just putting yourself in an even more awkward situation.

By increasing your hand strength as well as the steal size, you hope that they make no adjustment and continue to fight back light as now you have better hands and a bigger pot.

Calling is usually the biggest mistake you can make in defending your blind, if your opponent is doing that (even better, if they're doing it with a wide range) you don't want to stop them.

I agree about raising more if they're calling, but only because you should then be raising with a really wide value range.

How many BB are you betting?

I start out with a 3BB raise on every hand I raise. I will move up to a 4BB raise when getting called with weak crap a lot. Like I said, I'm not a loose thief. When I'm stealing, most of the time I'll have at least 89s, but more than likely I'll have a suited Ax, KQ or better. I'm raising in a steal position whether it's considered a steal or not. That's not the issue.

My problem mainly lies on my cbets and if they donk bet the flop or not. If they are calling with junk and I have raised preflop with AQs and the flop comes 7s3c9d, what do I do. I don't really want to cbet this because there's no telling what they have. And if they donk bet the flop with a pot sized bet I don't really want to fold either, because there is a greater chance they didn't hit it at all, but even if they did I still have quite a few ways to beat them.

For the habitual donk bettor, I start raising their donk bets whether I have anything or not. Donking is usually such a bad play on a flop that's unlikely to be dangerous for the donk bettor (cuz you make more money by picking off a cbet) that I start paying a lot of attention to the player - these guys are usually (not always) fish, which means that if they stick around for a while, I'm expecting to make money from them. I find that a lot of the time either the donk bettor folds to the raise or checks down cheap if I let them. On a 973r flop, I'm really looking to find out a few things - are they donking pp's? Did they hit a pair? Do they realize that flop is unlikely to have hit Hero's range?

A donk bet from a better player on a coordinated board is more dangerous - this is more often a set at micro that's making sure you don't check behind and hit your flush/whatever on the turn. Good players that balance their ranges w donk bets w draws are uncommon at micro.

Checking behind someone w a high flop c/r frequency makes sense (AQo on a 973r flop) - you're probably ahead and getting to a cheap sd isn't terrible. I'd start varying my lines a bit, cbet sometimes w A high and check behind sometimes.

I don't like a min raise steal at all. AFAIC, you're a limper and you just made my response cheaper by 1-3bb. It also gives me odds to play some speculative hands and see what happens. My bb, the sb, your 2, so I'm getting 3.5 to 1 to look, and I'm 3.2:1 to pair, ignoring the smaller chance I'll flop a draw worth playing. I think it invites a call, at least at micros where I play. If we're stealing, we don't want a call, right?

RF

Think of it as the same as completing the small blind, it's not just pot odds you need to be looking at but the reverse implied odds of hitting your pair and losing anyway.

In other words, you lose bigger pots and win smaller pots OOP so you need to be winning a higher percentage of the time.

Letting them call OOP is good for us.

Just so that we're clear on this:

On the button, your steal success is 46%. That means that the immediate value of you raising the button is (assuming 1/2 structure and a 3bb openraise)

-3*0.54 + 1.5*0.46 = -0.93bbs.

... and when you cbet, you're successful half the time, when there's already ~6.5bbs in the pot. If you're betting 4.5bbs into that 6.5bb pot, then your immediate profit for the steal and the c-bet is

-0.93 + 6.5*0.5 - 4.5*0.5 = 0.07.

If this looks like pennies to you (it is) then do some multiplying. In a six-max game, you have ~17 buttons every 100 hands. The immediate profit from your steals adds 1bb/100 to your total win-rate. Immediate.

I stress "immediate" because obviously some of the times that they just refuse to fold both preflop and the flop you're going to have the best hand (sometimes even a monster) and right now we're just assuming the worst case scenario. In practise, you're doing much much much much better than the worst case scenario.

Don't diss stealing. It's awesome.

By the way, there's a slight problem with your numbers: Your flop cbet success% is likely over all hands where you cbet, not just your steals. That quite possibly may make your immediate profit go down (possibly even below 0EV). That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

What you need to look at is how much money you're making from the button overall when you steal, which will tell you a lot more than just these numbers. You can filter out all the big hands (e.g. TT+) if you want to know how profitable your "trash" is.

My button steal% for last month was 50.0%, which is lower than it usually is, but I play in games with a decent chunk of short stackers and a lot of really triggerhappy 3-bettors. My steal success was 55.7%.

My flop cbet success% OTB for last month after a steal was 37.7%. I obviously lose money once I see a flop but I'm making a killing overall. 70bb/100 when I open on the button. Edited to add: 65bb/100 when I remove TT+ from the sample.

Okay, that looks a lot better. Thanks FP. I went and put those filters in and I'm coming out on top (results below). It just seems like it was so much easier to make money when I first learned to do this, and now it just seems like it's a battle 75% of the time.

How do these numbers look? Anywhere I could improve?

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