As we all know, the blinds are an essential part of a poker game. Without them, there would be little or no action and the game would descend into a nut peddling contest, which would be much less fun. The blinds represent the only money that is available to be won each and every hand and as such they drive the action in a poker game.

In all forms of poker, but especially tournament play, you will find yourself in situations where you have the opportunity to “steal” the blinds. By this I mean you are seated in a late position – Button or CO most commonly – and everyone in earlier position has folded to you. Frequently in this situation a raise will net you both the small and big blind, a move which is called “stealing the blinds”.

Using the term stealing to describe this action implies that you do not deserve the blinds and thus are making this raise with an inferior hand. This is something you will have to do often in tournament play if you want to go deep often. The problem however is one of timing, as any opponents who pay attention will quickly notice if you simply attempt a blind steal every single time you have the opportunity to do so. In a tournament where you are not deeply stacked – let’s say you have around 20 big blinds – you should be aiming to pick up just more than one pot per orbit on average, to stop your stack from diminishing past recovery. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should always steal at least one pot every orbit, but your average stealing frequency should fall somewhere inside this range.

So, when is it best to try a steal? The key to this, like many poker questions, is observation of your opponents, specifically those to your immediate left in this case. As soon as you sit at a table, you should be observing all your opponents of course, but pay special attention to those within 3 or 4 seats of you, to your left. These are the players who will be in the blinds when you have a chance to steal them. Watch how they play when in the blinds and try to determine roughly what kind of player they are, especially when faced with a possible steal attempt. Do they often just lay their blind down in the face of any action, or are they someone who feels that every possible steal attempt is indeed just that, or they must protect their blind and might come back over the top, with or without a hand? Hopefully you will find out enough information from observing these players to know when a steal will be likely to succeed.

When you become short stacked in a tournament, blind stealing becomes especially important, as those blinds (and antes, if used) will help nurse your small stack back to health. However, be careful about stealing with a very small stack, as you are obviously more likely to get called as your stack size decreases.