I have been discussing with some folks the strategy around a no-limit sit’n’go. One of the interesting questions that was raised by Dave Loop was with a table of passives, does it make sense to try to steal blinds from early position. My response was this:
That depends on how you feel your image is. If you’ve been doing some raises and steals as of late and you try to steal again from early then you may get some frustrated players calling you down just to shut you up. When I see a raise from early position it strikes me as odd and I take very special interest in that person. So I would suspect the same is true with other players. So a raise from early will draw attention to you, perhaps some of it unwanted.Now, I would raise early if it were down to say 5 players or less. Forcing the action is often a good thing. The downfall of course is that you don’t know if somebody is going to re-raise or not, and once that flop hits, you’re at a serious disadvantage having to act first. If you haven’t hit anything and you don’t continue you’re aggressiveness after the flop then you’re essentially giving up the hand.
With passives, I think the strategy for raising early is to allow you to play a few more hands by protecting them (ATs or 66 – JJ). If you don’t outright steal the pot, a raise against passives should likely reduce the hand down to you vs one other player. Now, that other player likely has a good hand so if you haven’t hit anything, you need to figure out if he hit something. Since you know he’s passive and since you raised, he likely is playing something like QQ, KK, KQs or AK. If he’s playing one of the non-pair hands, a bet from early could win you the pot if the flop doesn’t hit him.
Moral of the story: raising early requires a more playable hand than in late even if you’re primary goal is to steal. Or else be prepared to fold to a re-raise which is likely not a good strategy to take on.
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