Shortly after reading Marm's "blind defense" thread I got to thinking more about playing against steals. As it turns out the same guy that Marm was playing in that hand I had seated to my right on another table. (TAA player with a 50+% stael attempt.) He was making a good amount of steal attempts from both CO and button every chance he had which I generally allowed for a bit.. So I'm curious to hear so opinions playing against habitual steal attempts. My scenario went like this:

Long story short, 1 hand I'm in the SB, thief is OTB. Folds to him he raises I fold....I say to myself next time it happens I'm 3 betting him with any 2. Next hand it folds around to him again he's in the CO, as expected he raises, I'm holding an A4o OTB...(I don't have the HH available I'm at work).

So I 3 bet him with my A4o, the blinds fold, he calls.

Flop (luckily) came 5,6,7 rainbow...so I had and OESD. He bets I reraise (which I planned on doing regarless of the flop), he folds.

What I was wondering is how/when do you guys pick your spots? Do you have a minimum hand criteria for do it? I was also considering showing my hand just to say "I know what you're doing..back off". Is something like that a good idea to do or no?

Also are how concerned will you get with a flop, meaning are you looking more for baby cards, or would you rather see a big card. I've noticed last night on UB there tended to be more TAA's at a table then I generally saw at Stars so I'm trying to get a feel for playing against more of them.

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Blind play is very difficult and there are several reasons to do it, mainly to tell people to leave your blinds the fuck alone.

Anyway I actually don't defend much from the SB, but when you do you really have to raise in order to force out the BB. I like to have decent hands here, since it is getting expensive to play them and you are in bad position.

In the BB I defend alot, I mainly call in order to keep it relatively cheap and see how the flop looks. I play alot of hands, but will discard garbage most of the time (72, 82, J3, Q4 etc are not worth defending). Great hands are medium small connectors or 1 gappers suited or not 67, 56, T8, J9 etc... You'll often hit a ragged flop that your stealer will continually try and bluff you off of and these hands can make alot of money.

Now against a player who constantly raises from the CO/button, do you think it's better to try to defend when you have the button and he's stealing from the CO, as opposed to the blinds? I've noticed I rarely defend my SB also...however I can get pretty pissed when a guy in the CO is constantly raising me when I have the button and everyone folds to him.

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I have 500+ hands o n that guy, and I wouldn't call him a hibitual stealer, just enough to doubt him though. 50%-60% Steal attempts means that he's folding almost half the time he's given a chance to steal.

I usually assume players that have impressive stats are observant enough (either thorugh watching the table or they too are running PT) to see that I (and other good players) are good enough to lay hands down. I try to use this against them. The majority of the players at these limits are either fish or Drones. Non-thinking, non adapative players, but for the most part play a decent game. Most of the good players will assume this of a non-fish player until proven otherwise. So therefore, I'm assuming he's got a wide range of hands to raise with here PF, So possibly a reraise here may get him to let it go. I'm assuming he's assuming that I won't reraise with marginal hands since I have not been playing off the farm so far. He now has to give me credit for a better than average hand. Then we get a coordinated ragged flop. We can now let him act first again to give us more options, or we can bet out representing the made hand, but I prefer to CR because it usually carries more weight. He will usually bet out to perform a continuation bet, now we can check raise him to imply a) I love this flop and have you, b) I have a big pair and wanted to get an extra bet out of you before you folded. Because he sees us a competent player, but we haven't done this situation alot before, he has to give us credit for a hand better than his, so he has to lay it down.

The advantage here is, this will only happen once or twice a session. Very rarely do we get position on the same guys often enough for them to see this as a pattern.

Couple things:

1) Doing this against fish/maniacs/retards is not effective. Play for value then.

2) If would limp in the SB with a hand, then I will defend it against a steal. I'm not going to be doing this type of play with J4o. I'm thinking Suited aces, Suited connectors, two broadways. Weaker hands that are still playable, like mid one or 2 gap SC's, suited Kings and Queens, unsuited connectors, I'm not 3 betting PF. I want to see the flop, figure out where I stand and play it for steal or value.

3) Really flop dependant. If I have A3s and the flop came TJK, I'm probably not going to be as aggressive. I have to assume he's got at least one paint (on average) to be stealing, and since there's a lot of paint here, My CR probably has a low chance of success.

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