Stealing Blinds at Poker Stars

One of the skills that you need to learn when you play poker is how to steal the blinds. Generally you shouldn’t worry about stealing blinds until you’re playing at the $1/$2 level as it isn’t worth it at the lower stakes. There are certain things that you need to know about stealing blinds before you ever try doing it and I’m going to teach you them below.

The biggest factor that you need to weigh into your decision when stealing blinds at Poker Stars is your table position. It’s very difficult to steal the blinds from your opponents when you’re in an early position because there are still lots of players to act after you have raised the pot. When you’re in one of the late positions on the table you’ll be able to see how most of the players before you act.

You should always make sure that you’re careful when raising from the button. A lot of poker players raise the blinds from the button when nobody else has called the hand, but most players will know defend their blind from a button raise with almost any marginal hand. The best position to raise from on a 10 player table is the 6th or 7th position since it will seem like you have a reasonably good hand and not just trying to steal the blinds.

Apart from your table position you need to also consider what type of opponents still need to act in the hand after you have raised the pot. If you’re raising the pot against an aggressive poker player then you might find that they call a lot of your preflop raises just to see if they hit a hand on the flop. If this happens you need to always make a continuation bet on the flop to find out where you stand in the hand. In some cases your opponent might raise your bet on the flop and you’ll most likely need to fold, but it’s a risk you need to take.

If you’re lucky enough to have passive Poker Stars.com players sitting to your left then you’ll have a much simpler time stealing their blinds. Passive players will only play a small percentage of their hands which means you have a high percentage chance of stealing their blind. Your table position isn’t as important when you have passive players sitting to your left on the poker table. The more you steal the blinds from your opponent, the more likely they’ll re-raise you, so make sure you’re careful about how often you steal the blinds.

The last tip I want to leave you with is that your poker table image will also play a part in your decision about stealing the blinds. As I just mentioned above, if you steal the blinds a lot your opponents will eventually pick-up on what you’ve been doing. Once your opponents have realized you’re just stealing the blinds you’re going to find a lot more opponents will begin calling or re-raising your preflop raise. Try to keep the frequency of stealing blinds down as much as you can. If you’re playing online poker you can switch tables often which will allow you to play against other opponents that don’t know your playing style.