Is stealing blinds in cash games a rewarding play? It seems to me that the risk vs reward ratio is quite weak opposed to tournaments when blinds are so high you need to steal to survive.
thanks in advance

LOL, yep.

ESPECIALLY IN LIVE GAMES... OMFG, can you guess why???

If this is about live low stakes cash games, I'm pretty sure the concept doesn't even exist

lol +1/thread

this, a thousand times this

Depending on limit u are asking about, stealing antes say at 2/5 does exist, but moreso the whole dynamic of following thru when called since live players do call much more often OOP.

So yea we...
1- steal ante some by itself
2- Use position alone to outplay a stubborn OOP villain

^^ I think you are getting more into the concept of building up a pot and then stealing it.... which is essentially post-flop edge.

I think true blind stealing almost never happens in live games since they are much more loose-passive. I mean how often do you see a "raise and take it" 9 handed live vs. online.

Obviously has to do a lot with table mechanics, but I steal blinds a lot at 2/5. I don't care if they want to chop that's too bad (although I'll let them chop once in a while just to not seem over the top agro).

If I see the people in the blinds are fit/fold, I will steal from them like mad. Most of the time it's either take their blinds or better, take the money they called my raise with. It's awful how they call something like AQ, then fold on a 8 5 2 flop because they 'know' I raised with trash and thus now I must be ahead with a flop like that. LOL - but I'll take it.

yeah but how often will it get folded around to you, so that you can open and try to steal? how often will you not get flatted? how often will there be limpers?

i agree straight up stealing isn't really an effective play at LLNL games.

build a pot then steal IP works depending on who's in the blinds. better to do it from BTN than CO or earlier though...

these opportunities are rare, however. if they come up lots, consider a table change

Thanks guys

Your mentality in cash games should not be to steal the blinds. It should be to make money. You want fish to play against you and see flops when you have a clear advantage. Just raise your hands like you normally would. If nobody calls and you pick up the blinds, so be it.

right.. If I raise a few times and everyone folds I adjust. I need to raise less or raise more hands for a while until they start calling. I'm not raising to collect $2 or $4.

The OP asked the question above. I dont know about 1/2, but at 2/5 and 5/10 the answer is yes. Does it happen as often as onlilne, of course not. But it happens when it happens. When all is folded to button a good player will raise about ATC. So yeah, it serves its purpose, just not as often.

This. He's probably done it 8x but is under the impression he's gotten away with it 800

As AintNoLimit said above, it probably is a relevant and viable strategy at higher limits where less people will have limped before you act

It is actually folded around to me very often, especially if I am being loose preflop. And I think as I mentioned, if they flat that is fine. Playing a raised pot hand with position against fit/fold types is EVEN BETTER than stealing just the blinds.

just because it doesn't happen often doesn't mean you shouldn't do it when you do get the opportunity.

Also if people are flatting garbage out of the blinds, all the better.

I think it is more a matter of opportunity than strategy. At 1/2 is extremely rare to have the opportunity. That said, against the right villains it is a nice bonus. Keep in mind that you want to do this against tight (tight meaning players who don't like to call raises oop) players who aren't aggressive post flop (which are a large majority of players).

Assuming our hand has zero postflop value (which it doesn't, of course):
- If we open to 4BB, we risk 4 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 73% of the time.
- If we open to 3.5BB, we risk 3.5 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 70% of the time.
- If we open to 3BB, we risk 3 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 67% of the time.
- If we open to 2.5BB, we risk 2.5 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 63% of the time.
- If we open to 2BB, we risk 2 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 57% of the time.


Hope that helps.

I agree with this to an extent, but most of the 1/2 players I play against are semi-competent enough to adjust to a button raise, cuz omg you have the button sitting in front of you so they notice if you do it a lot.

So to me the best place to make a random raise with ATC with 0-2 limpers, is the cutoff. You're in similar position, you usually lose the button, & if a blind or limper calls, all the better.

This is especially effective for me since I usually have a fairly tight image so if my opponents miss the flop they're folding to my c-bet almost every time. They also tend to donk when they do hit a hand, saving me even more $$$

You definitely aren't doing this for the blinds alone though, as many people have said.

this is for a pure steal. fit-or-fold tendencies that are rampant at 1/2 NL will make the required success rates much lower for the play to be +EV, since we can often take down the pot with a c-bet, and even if not, we also benefit from position and a post-flop edge over the blinds if they are average players (or worse).

this is interesting and seems intuitive now that i think about it. i haven't experimented too much with steal type plays b/c there are much bigger leaks to plug in my game right now. but i agree that any player who is even somewhat aware and isn't a nit or a weak tight player is likely to put you to the test if you steal from BTN. a CO or even HJ steal seems more likely to succeed and elicit either folds pre or fit-or-fold behavior OTF, depending on the players behind.

good point.

It is wrong to assume that stealing is not profitable at lower stakes as blind tendencies should determine bet sizing and hand selection. Sometimes the necessary bet sizes will be large in comparison to stack sizes, but that does not make it any less profitable to have position in a bloated pot against a weak opposition.

I would extend this stuff to include the hijack seat as well as the cutoff. Particularly if the players on your left are tellboxes, and you can get a discrete look at who is doing what behind you, but dont make it obvious for simple reasons.

The fact that most opponents who tend to call OOP with trash are also fit or fold, means that the post flop value of our hand is massive vs one or two people from either the blinds or who have limped called. In fact, I would say these kind of hands (raise pre, get called in one or two places with positions, cbet plain flops such as 885 or 22T when checked two, or if I flop a pair and take it down on the flop) make up the largest individual part of my winrate, compared to flopping the joint and coolering someone, bluffing, or whatever...