When you are in the blinds in poker tournaments you are in a vulnerable position. Before the flop you are last to act, so
you have seen what the intent is of the opposition, and you are partially invested giving you better odds to play. The
problem off-course is that you will be playing out of position, being first to act on each consecutive round of betting
from the flop to the river.
In this article we are looking at the aggressive route of defense. Instead of accepting the play out of position you will
be three bet pushing when faced with someone's steal attempt. There is however three factors that you want to take into
consideration before you before making this move:
* Your chip stack, optimally 12-20 big blinds
* The cards you have been dealt, in relation to the range of cards of your opponent.
* How loose your opponent is who is attempting to steal
The stack of 12-20 blinds is often called the reship stack; the reason is that this is the optimal chip stack for you to
push into a stealer. With this type of poker chip stack, you will be looking for the best opportunity to present itself
for you to reraise and push against your opponent.
Next you have to look at your hole cards. You do not really want to push a hand like 95o, which will be killed if you run
into one of the better hands. Against the stronger hands some of the weaker you can play that do quite well are: Pocket
pairs like 22-77, suited high cards JTs, QJs, QTs and KJs. With aces you want to avoid hands that easily are dominated
like A9o and ATo, and then it is better to add something like A5s as the second card does not matter much if you run into
some premium hand. For instance if you run into hands like AK and AQ, hands like A5s although not good will still be
better than ATo.
The perhaps most important factor to consider before three bet pushing or reshoving is to determine how loose your
opponent is playing. When you push you mostly hope that your opponent will fold and you simply pick up the pot without a
fight. For this to occur your opponent will have to have a weaker hand, so if you have a hand like AJ and carefully tight
Mr. Nitty has raised from early position, then you can be sure your hand will be worse than his. If on the other hand we
have Mr. Aggressor who likes to steal and are opening yet another hand from the dealer button, then it is more likely that
he might have anything. In that instance a hand as weak as A2o might be enough to reraise all in.
All in all the reason you want to push from the blinds against a stealer is often to pick up the chips in the middle of
the table. With a stack of say 15 blinds and someone raising say 2.5 blinds, then you could pick up those plus the initial
pot, giving at least 5 extra to your pot. This is an increase of about 35% without much risk. That is what make this
strategy so strong.
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