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At some point in any tournament, whether on Titan Poker (Titan: About) or Sky Poker (Sky: About) blinds will get to the point where steals will begin to become commonplace. At this point, the resteal can become a powerful tool to defend against steals and to attack medium stacks, who have the most vulnerable stacks of any in a tournament. If you have an M of 6-9, and they are sitting on a stack of M 12, calling your all-in with something like AJo or 77 puts them at risk of being a short stack with an M of just 3-6.

When a player of this stack raises to 3x from the cut-off, if you were to just call that bet, the amount of chips already in the pot is enough to justify a resteal more so than just a flat call. The resteal should generally only be attempted on late position raisers, unless the raiser is a super loose aggressive player who has routinely ignored position when raising. The hands you can consider a resteal with vary greatly; A8 and up, K5 and up, Q8 and up, J9 and JT, and pairs from 55 up are all acceptable restealing hands, so long as you believe you have a reasonable chance of your opponent folding. The range on Kx is wider than Ax simply because dry aces are more likely to look you up than dry kings, so the odds of you being dominated are much lower if you were to be called while holding K8s; only AK, KQ, and possibly KJ are likely to look you up.

The more likely you are to be called, the tighter you should consider making the requirements, unless you’re looking to chip up; a smaller M or an opponent who can make hero calls with less than stellar hands should be cause for caution if you’re making a resteal with the lower end of the spectrum of hands we’ve discussed, pairs not withstanding. The bottom range of these hands are actually not good for stealing as opposed to restealing; by restealing, we’re adding a significant amount of chips to our stack if the steal is successful, and if not, we give ourselves the opportunity to grab a pile of chips and have a manageable M to work with. The same factors that work for our resteal work against our steal though; if the guy with M of 12 folds his cutoff instead of raises, and you raise from the button with K8o for 3x, you gain much less if your steal works, and if one of the blinds comes over the top, can you call with K8?

The trick is, you don’t want to ask yourself these questions; you want to force your opponents to make these decisions instead. You also don’t want to try the resteal against early or early middle position raisers that you have little information on. You can assume that their range of raising hands is going to be much tighter than if they had been in later positions, and therefore your fold equity in restealing is much lower. If the raiser is early, treat the hand normally and only come into the pot with hands you would against a normal raise.

Also, restealing when the antes haven’t kicked in is also less likely to be effective, because even late position raisers are looking to get action more often than when the antes kick in; there isn’t as much in the pot to contest, and therefore their raise represents a hand more often than than when there are antes. Any player that plays tight even when the antes kick in are also bad players to steal from; if they don’t adjust, their raises are just as strong now as they were at the beginning stages of the tournament, and thus should be respected as such. Players that loosen up and raise from the button or CO frequently when the blinds kick in are your most ideal players to resteal from.