Hand 1.

Well this is a straight up steal met with some resistance. The BB in this case is a typical tag who I have seen be way over-jealous in blind defenses. I had about 50 hands on him, he seemed reasonable but got a bit too aggressive in HU situations 21/14/4.

Absolute Poker
Limit Holdem Ring game
Limit: $1/$2
9 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (9 players) Hero is CO with
5 folds, Hero raises, Button folds, BB 3-bets, Hero calls.

Flop: (4.5SB, 3 players)
BB bets, Hero calls.

Turn: (3.25BB, 3 players)
BB bets, Hero raises, BB 3-bets, Hero calls.

River: (9.25BB, 3 players)
BB bets, Hero calls.

************************************

Hand 2 is a blind defense hand

Villian in this case was again tight and aggressive though backed off and folded alot to some decent pressure. I had about 200 hands on the guy he was 13/7/3.7 but he rarely showed down hands he only went to SD 12% of the time.

Absolute Poker
Limit Holdem Ring game
Limit: $1/$2
8 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (8 players) Hero is BB with
4 folds, Villian raises, 1 folds, SB calls, Hero calls.

Flop: (6SB, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, Villian, SB folds, Hero raises, Villian 3-bets, Hero calls.

Turn: (6BB, 2 players)
Hero checks, Villian bets, Hero raises.............

I could be wrong, and probably am, but I don't see how you can be ahead in either hand. Although you still have a live draw in hand 2.

Is it worth getting into these heads up battles over the blinds? Maybe I need to work on this aspect of my game, but I am not trying to steal with 4 10 off.

I am also not bothering to to defend in hand 2........

Does this add much to your overall game? I have really ignored blind defense and stealing so far.....could be that its more relevant at higher levels?

you are missing the fact that marm is part maniac.

Originally Posted by growlers

To answer the other poster, yes - blind stealing and blind defense is a huge part of the higher limits and if you leak money in these situations you are in trouble at the higher limits.

Hand 1: What is with the flop call??????? I would have folded the flop. If you want to try to keep the pressure up you have to raise on the flop here, not call. I don't see the point of flatcalling and then raising the turn. The 10 may not have put you ahead anyway. For him to fold the turn he would have to be:
1) three betting with crap preflop
2) not caught a piece of the flop with his crap
3) not picked up a draw on the turn with his crap
With a J and 10 and 2 spades on the board this combo is REALLY unlikely.
I think this hand was chip spewing past the preflop steal part.

That type of flop was really the kind that misses people especially people who 3-bet PF, the spades maybe helped I really didn't know. My plan was to call the flop and raise the with just about any card, since the villian here seemed out of line compared to how he played big pairs before. Also if he had overcards he was gonna call my flop raise if I used one so it had no real value. So the turn comes he bets and I raise, the card actually helped alot pairing me up. To my suprise the villian 3-bets me, now I had seen him do it before when he thinks people are bluffing him, but at this point I put him on pocket pair probably an overpair to the board. I bloated the pot, so I felt that I had to call the extra bet and called the river, because I felt there was a greater than 1 in 9 chance he was bluffing or had a PP under TTs.

In essence here I was setting up my turn move on the flop, I was trying to play the hand similar to how I would have played the hand had I AJ, and in HUs situations I play AJ like this fairly often.

I love aggressive stealing but against certain players there is no way to make it profitable enough to be worth it, and you have to give up sometimes. At least wait and go to war in hands where you have reasonable outs. Remember, for stealing to be +EV you can't spew all the chips you steal in the hands people defend......

Hand 2: I have no problem with how you played it. I assume if the SB called the flop you would have called instead of raised. I have to admit I would have checkcalled the turn and then bet out on the river improved, checkcalled unimproved with the pair of eights. May be a little weak, but I think I'd rather keep the pot smaller and get to showdown for less of a price, but the line you took is reasonable I think.
Tough hand to say the exact best line to take and defend it strongly.

Yeah on the flop I was just gonna call with my up and down draw if the SB had called, when he folded it gave me a better shot at trying to take the pot down here with a semi-bluff. Turn here I still had the up and down draw but also paired up, it was a close decision here between call and raise. I chose to check raise since I figured this player was capable of folding a better hand than I had, and against better players nothing is more annoying than the double check raise, in essence I did it because it made me look more like a donkey trying to play a monster. He folded his hand in this case my guess is he had AK/AQ or possibly even QQ or JJ.