The Synchronous Converter

The concept of stealing blinds and antes is certainly nothing new to the game of poker: the ‘position raise’ concept is way older than the famous line by John Malkovich in ‘Rounders’ that so many like to quote in that old Russian accent.

Often, though, and especially in short handed and sit n go casino tournaments, stealing blinds is not only important, it’s nearly vital if you are going to win regularly, especially during periods when the cards aren’t quite coming hot.

The basic concept of stealing blinds is that when acting from late position, the odds that another online poker player has a strong hand (one worth calling a raise with) gets less and less likely. Thus, if you’re on the button, or even one or two seats off the button, it can be profitable to put in a raise and try to pick up the chips uncontested. If you get reraised when holding a minor hand, you can simply foldand as your frequency of raising increases, the action you will get when you do have a hand increase too! If you do get called, odds are often that the player will often miss the flop and check it over to you, the raiser, at which point you can bet and often pick up not only the blinds and antes, but the extra bet they called trying to catch up to the hand that you don’t even have. You never really have to put yourself at risk because you’re only committing your chips to the pot when the other players exhibit weakness.