Stealing in Short Period Tournaments
There’s a pretty major difference to the way major large-scale poker tournaments such as the World Series of Poker operate in their blind periods and the ones more commonly offered online or in a casino. The main difference, and the element that makes these smaller scale poker tournaments a much different beast, is the length of the periods between increase in blinds. In these shorter scale tournaments, then, there’s a lot of thievery and blind milking that can go on in the name of finessing those short periods, rather than interpreting them as a force against you. It becomes more and more important as the blinds increase that you get in there and steal your fair share of the offerings, regardless of the cards you are dealt. The strategy I often employ is to raise to 3x the big blind when it is folded around and I am on the button, or one or two seats off the button. Stealing from two seats off the button can be an underrated as a place to steal from, as it’s a bit less expected, and tends to get more respect. If another online poker player comes in before me, I will fold off the button, or just call on the button if the price and the odds are strong, and hope to hit my hand or maybe try to steal if the action on the flop allows. If I am called, I am very careful about committing chips against aggression unless I make a strong hand.
This general perspectiveavoiding aggression unless you are the aggressor, or have the cardscan be a good method for making it deep into more tournaments than trying to get involved in winning every hand.
