Restealing

Restealing in poker is a multi-faceted skill and one that requires you to analyse a number of key factors. Here are some more conditions you need to assess before stick your chips in the middle:

Stage of the tournament – resteals are more likely to succeed during the middle stages of an SNG. Moreover, they will have a higher success rate the fewer players there are at the table because there is less risk of someone behind you finding a strong enough hand to call. Essentially, resteals are even most likely to succeed when the tournament approaches the bubble and the blinds are high.

How well does our hand fair against your opponent’s range - To set a standard hand range for restealing against an imaginary “general opponent” we can safely say AQ+ and 88+ is profitable. However, this can be adjusted accordingly to suit the player and the table dynamics to the point where any fairly strong hand can be used to reshove. For example, a very loose player min raises from the BTN and we hold KTs in the SB. At this point we could figure our hand stacks up relatively well against their range, plus we have a massive amount of fold equity against this player. Indeed, there can even be some cases where the cards don’t matter as our fold equity is so great.

If we were to set a general point in an SNG when restealing is most likely to succeed it would be at the 50/100+ blind levels and above. This is because the blinds usually represent a decent percentage of your stack and, in general, at least one player has already been eliminated from the game. Practise and always remember there are always more strategies and tips on how to play poker online that a great player should always be practising!