Stealing Blinds in No Limit Texas Holdem

Stealing the blinds is one way of ensuring survival in a no-limit Texas Hold’em game. If you steal enough blinds, you can be in the game a longer time than your initial stack warrants.

What Is Stealing the Blinds?

In Texas Hold’em, there are obligatory opening bets from the small blind and the big blind (the first and second player to the left of the button provides the small and big blinds, respectively). Together, they make up the initial pot.

Stealing the blinds refers to trying to win the initial pot or trying to win the blinds. Stealing the blinds serves a two-fold purpose: it will let you win extra chips, unchallenged, and help you reduce the size of your opponents’ stack.

How to Steal the Blinds

In order to steal the blinds, you must make all your opponents drop out of the betting round/s pre-flop. The best way to do this would be to raise and re-raise during the pre-flop betting round. If you are under-the-gun and you wish to steal the blinds, bet more than the minimum. If you are in a middle position or a late position, you should multiply the minimum bet by around two times. In other words, if you are trying to steal the blinds, bet aggressively and avoid mini-raises.

Stealing the Blinds Strategy

If you are a late-position player, you are in an advantageous position to steal the blinds. If most of the players have folded before the betting action reaches you, you can dominate the game and steal the blinds.

If you are short-stacked and wants to steal the blinds, it would be much better to go all-in rather than wait to be raised. Take the lead in betting whenever you can. Additionally, if only a few players are at the table (the game is short-handed), stealing the blinds is good strategy because you are obliged to post blinds more often than not and you’ll run out of chips much sooner.

You should not try to steal the blinds all the time, however. Trying to steal the blinds means you have to make hefty raises. If another player plays you and you miss the flop, you’ll lose all your bets. Furthermore, not all blinds are worth stealing. If the blinds won’t significantly increase your stack, perhaps you should just let it go. If, however, the blinds will make a sizeable addition to your stack, then by all means go for it. The rule of thumb: be selective of the blinds you’ll try to steal.