Poker Articles

By Zpaceman | Published May 23 2007, 03:19 AM
We may not like to admit it, but all winning poker players are thieves. If everyone played poker with "basic poker strategy" (like "basic blackjack strategy"), then we’d all play our cards according to our hand strength and we’d all end up pretty even less the house rake, akin to the edge the casino has when we play basic blackjack strategy.

Successful poker players, however, win pots with weaker cards than those of their opponents. After the flop, this is known as bluffing or semi-bluffing, but when these pots are won pre-flop, it is generally known as “stealing” (specifically when an open-raise with weak cards wins only the blinds and antes).

There is, of course, no honor amongst thieves, and “restealing” has become an increasingly popular pre-flop move when a reraise with weak cards wins the blinds, antes, and the bet of a player who has open-raised (whether or not the open-raiser was “stealing”). This has changed the dynamics of stealing, and in this article I cover the use of steals as part of a mixed strategy to profit from opponents' resteals.

In the remainder of this article I will use the terms “steal” or “stealing” to refer to bets aimed at winning pre-flop pots with less than premium cards. While stealing is an essential part of any winning strategy, there are some basic issues with the use of the steal move.

The first issue is stack size. Early in a tournament where all the players have stack sizes of 50 big-blinds or more, there is little merit in trying to steal pots. In this phase of the tournament, a lot of players will happily call or raise your steals with cards such as pocket pairs, suited connectors, suited Aces or Kings, and any two high cards. Steals will fail a large percentage of the time, and you’ll often find yourself having to play post-flop poker with weaker hands than your opponents.

The second issue is position. It may feel that a steal from late position is more likely to be successful than from early position because there are fewer players remaining to act. Position, however, is a primarily a post-flop factor and has little relevance for a bet that is intended to win the pot there and then. In today’s game, where restealing late position bets has become so common, stealing may actually be more successful from early-mid position than from late position because players generally give more respect to such bets (hence the recent expression that “under the gun has become the new button”).

The third issue is calling a raise after a steal bet. A steal bet should be, by definition, one that takes down the pot pre-flop with no opposition. When a steal gets raised, the tactic has failed in this hand and it should generally be folded without a second thought. Stealing works as part of a mixed strategy over a succession of hands, and failed steals should be folded as part of this strategy.

The fourth issue is bet sizing. The size of a steal bet should generally be the minimum that the table will allow to be profitable. Before the antes are in play, there are 1.5BBs in each pot before any action, so a steal bet of 3BBs will need to succeed more than 2 times out of 3 to be profitable. When the antes kick-in, the same bet only needs to be successful more than 3 times out of 5 to be profitable. Reducing the steal bet to 2.5BBs only requires a success rate of more than 5 times out of 9 when the antes are in play. Reducing the bet size, however, may induce a higher rate of resteals, thereby negating any advantages unless this is part of a mixed strategy.

You might have noticed that I haven’t even covered the cards you need for steals yet. That’s because like so many plays in poker, you should be considering the situation before you consider whether your cards are useful for that situation.

While any two cards can be used for steals in the right situation, as a general rule, I like to use marginal hands for my steal attempts. These are hands that I can comfortably fold to a reraise but do have some value if I simply get smooth called: low-medium suited or unsuited Aces, medium suited Kings, low-medium suited connectors and suited gappers, or any two non-premium high card combinations (like KJ, KT, QJ or JT). With these types of cards, I will have a reasonable chance of winning the hand post-flop if I get called, especially if my steal attempt has bought me position.

Even if all these issues are properly managed, however, I feel that it has become increasingly difficult to profit from stealing alone, due to the number of players employing loose-aggressive playing strategies with pre-flop reraises. While you might get the occasional table where the majority of your steals go uncontested, you are more likely to be in situations where people play back at most of your attempts. In such circumstances, stealing alone is unprofitable; however, if used for deception as part of a mixed strategy, it retains its allure.

Consider a situation where the antes are in play and 2 out of every 3 steal attempts with 3xBB bets are contested by reraises and folded. Stealing alone nets a loss of 4BBs every 3 plays, clearly an unprofitable scenario. If, however, you expect a reraise 2 times out of every 3 times you make an opening bet, and you mix in one strong hand with each 2 steals, then you can profit from the scenario over the course of each three-play sequence. Let’s say your strong hand has a 2-to-1 chance of beating the reraisers hand and that these contested pots are worth at least 18 BBs:

Profit  = (0.33 x 2 – 0.67 x 3) x 2
         +  (0.33 x 2 + 0.67 x 0.67 x 18 – 0.67 x 0.33 x 18)
         =  2 BBs

Often the contested pots are worth considerably more than 18BBs, making the profitability of such a mixed strategy much higher. Recently when I won my WSOP seat package on Pokerstars, I used this three-play strategy very effectively against a loose-aggressive player over a relatively long intervening period of time between the three plays:

1. Open-raised A3 to 600 at 100/200/25 level and folded to a 4190 all-in reraise (lost 3 BBs).

2. Open-raised 64 to 1200 at 200/400/25 level and folded to a 4690 all-in reraise (lost 3 BBs).

3. Open-raised AsJs to 1800 at 300/600/50 level, called my remaining 7394 chips to an all-in reraise and won the showdown versus Jc9s for a 19138 pot (won 16.5 BBs).

In summary, stealing has become a difficult tactic to use in its own right when playing against loose-aggressive players. Against such players, however, stealing forms an integral part of a mixed strategy to deceive these players and use their aggression to your advantage.

Stuart “Zpaceman” Taylor is a professional poker player and Guest Pro at online poker training site href="http://www.cardrunners.com">www.cardrunners.com.