The play in no-limit Texas hold’em tournaments has changed significantly over the last five years. With the number of players blooding themselves on the internet and the wealth of poker training sites and learning resources, how people play is no longer a matter of just what cards they’re holding. The game has become so much more than that, and one of the concepts that has emerged is re-stealing.
Re-stealing, explained simply, is reraising a player with a marginal hand when you believe they are stealing themselves. Your goal when re-stealing isn’t to win at showdown, it’s to get your opponent to fold preflop. Re-stealing works because the opponent who has opened the action has usually done so with a marginal hand and cannot withstand the heat of a re-raise.
Don’t kid yourself
A common mistake players make when talking about re-stealing is something along the lines of the following. They’ll be talking to their poker buddies and say, “It folded to the button who raised three times the big blind. I knew he was stealing. I looked down at pocket Nines and decided to re-steal, making it ten big blinds to go.” Re-raising with a legitimate hand is not re-stealing. If instead our hero had a hand like 7-3 offsuit and had reraised the same amount, then he could have said he had made a re-steal. It’s important to always recognise what you’re doing and why at the poker table.
It’s important to know that re-stealing is not only a viable strategy to add chips to your stack, but also a way to understand what players are doing against you. If you open with a hand like A-J from the cut-off and find yourself facing a re-raise from the blinds, don’t automatically assume that your opponent has a monster. It’s highly possible, especially in this day and age against a good aggressive player, that they could be coming over the top of you with nothing thinking that you are stealing. Use what you know about your opponent to help you make your decision. If they’ve been playing ultra-tight, then folding might be the right thing. If it's someone who has been mixing it up a lot, however, you might want to consider coming back over the top of them rather than laying your hand down.
Blind theft
Without a doubt the most common sign of someone stealing preflop is when they are first to act from middle to late position or in the small blind and make a raise in an attempt to pick up the blinds and antes. Recognising this opens up a wealth of re-stealing opportunities when you’re sitting in the blinds. However, just because someone has raised first to act it does not mean they are stealing, nor does it mean a re-steal is always appropriate. You should always weigh up the situation carefully before pulling the trigger.
The most important factor to consider is the likelihood that the player in question is stealing. If the initial raiser is a guy who has played three hands in the last hour, it's best to save that move for a later time. If the initial raiser is someone who has played three hands in the last orbit, however, it might be the time to make a re-steal, because he probably hasn’t got the most stringent starting hand requirements. The question then becomes how much to re-raise in order to steal the pot. This is a tough one, because your opponent has one advantage that will factor into his decision regarding whether to call, re-raise, or fold: he has position. You thus need to judge how large a raise will compel him to fold. If you make a small raise, he could very well call you to take advantage of his position post-flop.
On the other hand, you don't want to raise so much that if he moves all-in or calls you will be crippled. Ideally, you should make a raise of about two to three times your opponent’s total bet.
For example, let's say the blinds are 100/200 and you and the button each have about 7,000 in chips. The button raises to 600. You should re-raise to somewhere around 1,800-2,400 total or a raise of 1,200-1,800. This is a big enough raise to discourage an easy call but it's also small enough to give you some options should he choose to play with you.
Don’t re-steal from shorties
Another factor that players often ignore is the stack size of the initial raiser. If your opponent only has 8-15 big blinds and has opened the action, he is much less likely to be stealing than someone with a bigger stack. He might also be getting the correct price to call if you re-steal.
For example, let’s say a player has ten big blinds and opens the action for three big blinds. Yes, he probably should just open-shove but there are a surprising number of players who will do just this. If you raise enough to set him all-in there will typically be about 15 big blinds in the pot and he will have to call for seven big blinds, giving him over 2-to-1 on his money. He’d have to have a really bad hand to justify folding in this spot. Adjust your re-steals accordingly against shorter stacks.
What if you're the short-stack?
Re-stealing is one of the best methods of chipping up when you are a short stack. The key is to make sure that you’re not so short that calling is automatic for the initial raiser. Ideally you want to have enough chips that calling would hurt their stack and they’re not getting a ridiculous price to call like 2-to-1 or better. Usually somewhere in the range of 12-15 big blinds is the right number of chips to pull off a successful short stack re-steal.
Let’s look at an example to see why. Say your opponent has 30 big blinds and has opened the action for three big blinds. If the blinds are 500/1,000 with a 100 ante at a ten-handed table this means there is 5,500 in the pot. If you have 9,000 left after posting your big blind and move all-in there will be 14,500 in the pot. Your opponent would have to call 7,000 to win 14,400 or over 2-to-1 on his money. What if you had 14,000 instead of 9,000? Now your opponent would have to call 12,000 to win 19,500 or 1.6-to-1 on his money. The price change is significant but more importantly 9,000 is a much smaller percentage of his remaining stack than 14,000. He can make the 9,000 call and still have 18,000 if he loses. If you hold 14,000, however, he'd only have 13,000 left if he lost.
All the correct conditions
As is the case with any type of re-steal, and perhaps even more so when you are a short stack, you need two conditions to be in place before attempting the move. One, your opponent must be willing to fold. If he isn't, the move will never work. Second, your opponent needs to be the kind of player who is raising light. Re-stealing against a rock has about the same probability of success as re-stealing against someone who never folds: little to none.
Re-stealing should not be something you use as an excuse for bad play. Shoving and crossing your fingers is pure gambling, but analysing a situation and exploiting your opponents’ playing habits, albeit with some degree of risk, is another matter entirely.