Hi--In tournament poker, if I make a preflop steal attempt from the button when it has been folded around to me , everything that I have read tells me that I only have to get the blinds to both fold about 60% of the time for this move to be profitable. Does anyone know if that 60% figure is more or less accurate?

The other thing that I would like to know is this--let's say that it's folded around to me on the button and I raise with "trash," but then at least one of the blinds calls my, let's say, 2.5X BB raise. Am I generally supposed to make a continuation bet on the flop, even if it hasn't hit my hand, or am I normally just supposed to check? Is there any generally accepted theory on that, or does it "just depend" on the player(s) involved? And let's just say, for argument's sake, that I am playing against an "average player" who is neither too nitty nor too aggressive...

How often the blinds have to fold depends on your sizing and the antes.

If it’s 2.5BB, you risk that to win 1.5BB+antes. Without antes, that number is 62.5%. For a 3BB open it’s 66.7% and for a 2BB open it’s 57.1%.

Madlex’s numbers are correct under the assumption hero has 0 equity pre-flop. However, this is never true. For example, 72o has about 12% showdown equity against a pair of aces but the realized equity is probably much closer to zero. Anyway here are the blind steal numbers for 0, 10 and 20 percent hero equity (extracted from draft book Hold ‘em Poker By The Numbers)

Required Fold Equity For Button Steal With Given Card Equity

Bet in bb	Equity=0%	Equity=10%	Equity=20%
2.0	57.1%	50.8%	42.3%
2.5	62.5%	56.5%	48.3%
3.0	66.7%	61.0%	53.1%
4.0	72.7%	67.7%	60.5%
5.0	76.9%	72.5%	65.9%

Regarding the post-flop question, you shouldn't be raising with "trash" in the first place if the blinds are "average". It only makes sense to steal with "air" if villains are nits. If they don't fold pre, then it's generally a bad idea to c-bet with air, because nits that fold a lot pre-flop will generally have something on the flop if they didn't fold pre, so they won't fold to the c-bet very often. (i.e. its usually better to give up on the flop if your pre-flop "bluff" didn't work, and you've got absolutely nothing on the flop, instead of throwing more money away).

A more rounded strategy is one that raises a "decent" range pre-flop, so that it steals the blinds fairly often, but still plays well if one of the blinds calls. e.g. Someone that opens 100% of buttons will pick up the blinds very often, but will do very badly post-flop when they called, and the post-flop losses (if they continue their aggression) will cancel out all the gains they got from steals. If you open with X% (which might be 35 - 55% of hands) you'll still have lots of equity on the flop, and be able to c-bet at a decent frequency with some actual equity.