Pre-Flop, Re-Steal Raising in Poker

There are lots of advices on how to more effectively play poker. Perhaps one of the most important lessons, especially where tournaments are concerned, is stealing blinds—which is really raising in poker. This is a lesson that will position us to better build our chips stack heading for the tournament leader. This may also help us with a feasible and practicable stack management while the blinds go up and the number of players lessens.

The idea behind a re-steal before the flop is really re-raising someone who made a first raise or bet to somehow attempt to steal the blinds, and we're not letting that player to. It may sound very simple but it isn't. It's not like daring to go rob a bank using our daredevil abilities immediately after the day it had been robbed by someone else—that would have been easier. Often we want instant results like that. But in no-limit Holdem poker we have to have more than enough patience, especially when we feel the threatening attack of desperation in our tournament run and we begin to worry about our stack.

We have to raise to steal the blinds, or there won't be any blinds left us to offer anyone. So usually, we are tempted to go all-in before the flop. However, we often do not realize that doing this makes us very susceptible to a re-steal. Raising to steal the blind will probably render us victims of a re-steal assault. Coming from a late position, it may be a good thing to re-raise and pump up the pressure for the remaining players. And, say, we happen to be the player who posted the bet on the big blind using a strong pocket pair, this scene is going to be very entertaining to watch as we check-raise the player who attempted to steal the blind. This may secure our chips stack or get it back to what it was.

Re-stealing is a great poker tool to have, and there are various ways of re-stealing in poker. The main thing here is the ability to pick up information from the way our opponent plays. For instance, reading the opponent's play through his stack size. If it is small and the opponent tries to bluff by raising early, the opponent's after the blinds. It's the acting too early that is important to see here.

When the opponent does raising in poker too early and his stacks are meager, it's the hint for us to re-steal by re-raising.