HomeThis is the last article on our series about how your position at the poker tables effects what hands you play and how you play them. In this article we look at how being in late position can give you the opportunity to steal some chips from the blinds.
Stealing the Blinds
We have already established that being in late position is the best place to be at the poker table, as you get to see what action the others at the table take before having to make your own decision. This enables you to play a wider selection hands, depending of course on what has gone on before you. Another advantage of being in late position – particularly if you are on the button – is the possibility of stealing the blinds.
When you are late in position the blinds still have to act after you before the flop and, given the right circumstances, you can use this to your advantage. To steal the blinds from late position you ideally want everyone before you to have folded. You can still consider a steal attempt if there has been one or two calls, but the risk is that there is a greater chance of running into a hand that will beat you.
The concept of blind stealing is very simple. The players in the blind will be out of position after the flop, so they technically need a strong hand to call your raise. More often than not, they will not have a strong enough hand to call you – so you can put in a raise pretty much regardless of what cards you are actually holding. The idea is that even if you run into a good hand every now and then, the blinds will fold most of the time, allowing you to win enough uncontested pots pre-flop to make up for the times that you do come up against a hand that plays back at you.
That concludes this series, so please check back next week for something new.
