Discussing effective stealing and fold equity

Hey this is my first post so go easy.

Fold equity is one of our most effective tools in building and maintaining a stack during tournament poker. It is the equity gained from chance of your opponents folding the hand and you winning the pot uncontested.
There are a number of factors that affect our ability to steal and take down pots using fold equity.
Personally the ones i focus most on are:

My table image
I consider playing very tight aggressive poker early in tournaments as an investment into my future ability to pressurize our opponents. Showing down early with marginal hands allows other players to put us on a wider range than we would like.

Relative stack sizes
Generally speaking the size of the blinds and ante often determine the pot odds given to a player considering a reraise or call.
Stealing across very short stacks may invite them to push all in, at which point you are priced in with a marginal hand for a chunk of your stack.
Big stacks a much more likely to reraise than mid stacks, whose stacks are much more vulnerable.

Position
Raises from early positions represent a much tighter raising range than those from SB and Button, which are often not respected. raising from cutoff and before will lead to a much tighter range being assigned to you

Stage of tournament
In the early stages of a tournament the blinds are too small to make uncontested pots a great enough reward for raising with a wide range of hands. Mid and Late stages are much more effective, but the bubble is easily when it is easiest to pressure players into folding, either by shoving postflop or raising pre. Most weak players are looking to make it ITM before continuing to play poker.

Opponents
Your opponents playing styles and ranges can be noted. I tend to note the players that will flat call a lot from bb or reraise light, and adjust my play against them by either betting higher against their blind with a tighter range, or 3 betting with marginal hand if stack sizes permit a fold for your opponent. It's also worth noting the players that don't give up a hand post flop, and those that fold to cbets often after calling out of position.

So i guess my question is what do you take into account when considering steals or resteals? I'm keen to get some other opinions.

Stack sizes in relation to the size that the pot will be if an opponent calls. If your steal getting called means that one of you is pot committed then usually its better just to push

If I notice someone ahead of me has been open limping or raising way too much, I love to steal with a shove. Anywhere in the area of 20BBs, this is often an effective play for me...

Very good point, it has its limitations tho, it works well when only considering 1 caller, but if you are raising from HJ, and the CO and Button are big stacks, but SB and BB are shortish mid stacks. It can be more effective as being reraised by the Big stacks wont commit your entire stack. (this assumes a relatively mid-big stack size)

Good move, I find the trouble is separating the players that are willing to fold those situation when they think they are beat and those that will call down any shove when they have money in the pot

Yes, that is tricky business. It's of course ideal to have a hand with some kind of potential (high cards, suited connectors, pp, etc). It's the "let's see a flop" player we can exploit with just about anything though, when blinds are getting high...

Good first post, seems you've got it pretty nailed

Effective stack sizes are important - if you raise CO to steal and everyone left to act has 4bb, for example, they are going to be shoving very light so your range should tighten. Similarly, if everyone has a huge stack and you have 8bb, then your range should again tighten because they are more likely to call you off light. The best situation for light shoves is when you are shoving into medium stacks for most or all of their chips, as they will have a small calling range.

You make a valid point about loosening your range around the bubble, and this should also apply at pay jump bubbles and close to the final table - 14 down or so - as well as at the final table. People want to make final tables, so you can exploit that, and when they make it the numbers jump so quickly they'll just want to move up the payouts as far as possible, especially in big tournaments.

There is a whole chapter on stealing blinds in the book " Poker Tournament Formula " by Arnold Snyder.
It really helped me.

I don't like to roll the dice on stealing blinds because generally that is more "gambling" than I like to do in poker. I treat poker like I would any other game of skill, play the best hands you can and vary how you play the good hands. That way, no matter what, people will pay you. It just depends how much you are willing to try to take

Honestly though, occasionally I will try to steal but I agree that it depends on where I am in the tournament. If I have the chipstack that is significantly larger than the rest of the table AND it is close to the "money" time of the tournament, I will take more chances. Presumably, if it is a large field, nobody will know that I played tight. Building my image early in the tournament will only do me good if I don't get moved around a lot from table to table and even then, it will only be good if the table keeps the same people for a long period of time.

With that in mind, I may also try to steal pots (post-flop) if the table has kept the same people for enough hands where I feel like I could have built some solid reputation with the other players seated. I look forward to playing with some of the people here more often. I think it is when you play with the same group of people often that you can truly build your ideal image, whatever that may be.

Additionally, I think what we are really discussing here is this:

At what level do you need to be thinking about the game to be able to accurately read your competition and effectively steal blinds/pots?

My answer to this would be that you need to be able to guess not only what your opposition may have for hole cards but you also need to be able to guess what they think you have for hole cards and then what they want you to think they have. That means that you are probably stealing more pots than blinds which will be more profitable long term than stealing blinds in late tournament play.

Agree?

It depends on the tournament, but stealing blinds is always going to be more profitable than stealing post flop in online MTTs because of the short stacked end games in MTTs - pretty much all MTTs apart from the small ones, on all poker sites, will end up with a short average in end game and it will stay that way (10-30bb).

Playing poker 'skillfully', to use your own word, is far more than playing the "best hands you can". In fact, that's probably the least skillful way to play poker. What matters in poker isn't what you have per se - it's what other people think you have, and what you think other people have. What hand you have comes into it when, after deciding what range you put an opponent on, you have to decide what course of action to take - value bet, bluff, fold, etc.

Given most players are inherently nitty, and even more so in the late game when they can nearly put their hands on the money they stand to win, stealing with rubbish is extremely profitable.

Forgive me, I wasn't trying to sound like I really knew what I was talking about. If I honestly knew how to play poker very well, I would either write a book or be at the poker tables now instead of discussing this strategy here .

What I was getting at is that people generally want to assume you are bluffing, especially in online poker. If I haven't played with somebody before chances are higher that they will not assume that I am a tight player and are therefore more willing to call my bets assuming I have nothing. If I always play relatively strong hands, when they call me I will win money. If they fold, I win the pot uncontested. That is what I was getting at.

I understand that "only playing strong hands" isn't skillful poker, it is just patient, luck-based poker. I have this question: How often can you steal a blind before people start calling you based on odds? What I mean is, if you steal 2 blinds before you get your next BB, don't you run the risk of people either A) stealing your BB or B) somebody calling your attempted blind theft because they think you can't possibly have strong hands that often?

The problem with only playing strong hands is that when you don't get them, you won't be playing any hands, and in big MTTs that means you will just blind out.

A) Other people will steal your BB less than you steal theirs because players generally don't steal enough, because they only play big hands.

B) Of course people will sometimes call, but only sometimes. If someone calls 10% of the time, that's 1/10 times they call - 9/10 times you pick up the entire pot uncontested. When they do call, you still have equity against their range to suck out and win the pot.

I disagree, the whole point of the stealing is that your opponents are yet to act, and a show of strength may bring the pot down uncontested, the range your opponent puts you on is relevant, but you have no information to make any kind of assumptions on his possible hand hence you treat his range as 100% (Online play obviously, but then when playing live i won't look at my cards till action is on me for this exact reason) and then infer his likely calling/reraising/folding ranges and determine if the raise is profitable.

The stealing post flop is also known as the Stop n Go, but that is usually used to counter someone who is attacking your blind, stealing postflop will only really work if you have the initiative, or stacks are deep enough for a reraise/shove to allow a fold for your opponent, (often even being against a likely range that you are behind you have good enough pot odds to call.) (I assumed that the raiser Cbet the flop which is typical unless their are multiple callers.)


I completely disagree about the bluffing part, my default status for other players are TAG especially if i have been moved tables and they are running deep in a MTT

Someone stealing your blind is irrelevant, those chips are lost the minute you post them, if you pick up a hand worth playing then great, but otherwise the fact you are in the blinds has no other effect than adjusting your pot odds for a call/reraise

Completely agree, also by only playing strong hands you make your opponents decisions easy for them, fold to any show of strength, by raising with a wider range of hands you will also be more likely to get stacked off when you do hold a monster as your range may dictate a reraise/ shove to your opponent, only to see you 3Bet/ flip over (AA/KK) and have their AJ completely dominated.

Stop n Go is when you are so short that a pre flop shove has little flop equity - so instead you call with the plan of shoving any flop and hoping this will give you some fold equity

Um, I don't think Stop n Goes have worked since like 2007 but I could be wrong about that....

I still use them occasionally - not against good regs, but they still work against nitty fish.

I like to steal in two ways....1=When no one has yet entered the pot....So i will open with suited connectors from middle position and in late position queen high is good enough for me...I also like the strength shown if there is only one limper before me....to raise with someone having already called shows strength so I like to raise given my hand meets the requirements

and then make my harder decisions post flop

In late position (BTN/SB) any two are good enough for me, queen high is too tight.

I find it adjusts radically based on opponents.
I think a massive leak in some players game is shoving too wide against specific opponents, shove into someones blind BB from SB every time you are first to bet becomes very obvious and exploitable. Many players seem to have a set decision that does not vary from SB and Button. shove any/limp monsters/limp any/(good players adjust according to other factors. determining which is the best play for each situation is the hard part).

Any two could be fine at times, as long as you aren't making this fact abundantly clear.

What are your thoughts?

Do you have a plan in case of a min 3Bet or Shove or call from your opponent?
do you determine what you will do before you make this reraise or after?

fold if theres a raise..or wait to see the flop if he calls....your biggest decisions need to be after the flop.....if you raise then flod its great it gives you a loose image and when you do a similar thing with aces or kings youll get paid off

but if i have posittion after a raise then i may call just because of that fact

Well, ultimately I am not a great poker player. My assumption that people think I am bluffing is based on the fact that, though I am generally a tight player, people will often call my bets with at best a middle pair thinking that there is no way I could possibly have the hand that I thought I was representing.

Now the fact of the matter is that due to my unskillful play, perhaps I simply wasn't appropriately representing my hand for the situation. This is a possibility that I definitely accept

I apologize that I wasn't able to provide any information of value. Good luck out there

Thanks for your input, I wasn't saying that I was right, just that that was my view of it. I'm still a little new at this
And there are always bad players who call down with weak hands/just generally play badly. Many don't even go past what cards they are holding,its how we make money!

Good Luck out there

I have actually noticed this, makes it harder to steal as they will call down with a weaker range tho. trade off i guess, ideally we want to have the best of both worlds and have a range that forces them to make mistakes.

yea my biggest tip if your gonna steal make your bet size look exaclty like it would if you have a legitimate hand...they cant read something thats always the same