The Importance of Stealing From Good Flops
Over time you will be dealt the same amount of good and bad hands as your opponents. This is encouraging for less experienced as there is no reason why profit cannot be obtained just like the top professionals because they hold two cards just like you! The difference between a winning and a losing player is how they maximise the win rate from the hands they are dealt, particularly in a poker tournament where you never get enough good starting hands. In this article we are going to look at stealing the pot when the flop texture is in our favour and how to do it.
When you are sitting with an opponent you should be classifying their starting hand range. If they are playing around 10% of starting hands you can narrow their hands down to almost an exact range of hands. AA-22, AK, AQ, KQ and AJ is their likely range. Focusing on tight opponents with a likely hand range we are able to distinguish many flops that are likely to have missed them and we can in turn steal the pot. Playing one hand per round, or 10% of starting hands is a tight approach and we can assume they will probably not call a continuation bet and turn bet with air (no hand or Ace High). This gives you a real advantage to steal blinds and antes towards the middle of a tournament.
When you hold a premium but none pocket pair hand an Ace will only hit the flop less than half of the time. This means that if you are making continuation bets every time your opponent knows some of the time you cannot always have hit the flop. This means they are likely to call one continuation bet a lot of the time with no hand to see what you do on the turn. Stealing the pot on the flop therefore must be timed carefully so your betting actions are not predictable. You should check some of the flops so that the steal attempts are not lost in what your opponents perceive to be a predictable bet. Variation is your deception.
Stealing a pot on the flop is a strategy best used in tournaments where the blinds account for a higher percentage of your stack. With the blinds at 200/400 with 25 antes your potential win on a ten handed table for one steal is 850 chips. With a tournament stack of under 10 ‘M’s (how many rounds of poker you can survive without playing a hand before being blinded out) this causes a 10% increase in your chip stack minimum. In cash games the blinds are lower relative to the stack size therefore steals are still useful but not nearly as important as having a hand. An advanced strategy is to raise with nothing into a continuation bet on a good flop, but this is highly dependant on accurate reads and is situation dependant on your opponent and your own table image.
Flop textures to steal from include rainbow flops with no obvious draws or flushes with low cards. For example if you hold AJ and are called by one opponent and the flop comes down 5 3 9 with three suits your play here would be to make the continuation bet. Your opponents are likely to hold a hand similar to yours in strength. If they hold a high pocket pair or a set you will be quickly re-raised or called. Even a call is enough to win the pot as you have an easy check fold on further streets. Do not try and steal the pot on the flop or turn if there are obvious flush draws, straight draws or a lot of high cards that would hit every starting hand e.g. 10, K, A unless you either have a tell or good information to determine that in this spot your opponents holdings are likely to be weak.
To make this strategy pay you take what knowledge you have of your opponent’s tightness, the flop texture and your own hand to carefully choose the right moments to steal the blinds and antes and maintain your chip stack. As 1983 World Series of Poker Main event winner Tom McEvoy says “You must survive long enough to get lucky” and this strategy keeps you in the game for that moment of truth where you risk it all to win it all.
By Malcolm Clarke
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